Serb Recalls Violent Abuse at Bosniak School Jail
This post is also available in: Bosnian
The prosecution witness, Radmilo Kapetina, told the court in Sarajevo on Monday that he was locked up in the 9th of May primary school in Pazaric in the Hadzici municipality on June 9, 1992 by Bosnian Army soldiers after his village was attacked.
Upon his arrival, he said that he was set upon by unknown assailants who hit his head against the wall, and was later beaten regularly.
“After we entered he school, a muscular young man named Zijovac came. He kicked me with his boot in the ribs on the left side. I could not breathe for a week after that. He came twice more to beat me. Each time the guard would take Zijovac away, but he would let him in again,” said Kapetina.
Mustafa Djelilovic, Fadil Covic, Becir Hujic, Mirsad Sabic, Nezir Kazic, Halid Covic, Serif Mesanovic and Nermin Kalember are accused of war crimes committed at the Silos detention camp, the Krupa barracks, and the 9th of May primary school in the Hadzici municipality between 1992 and 1995.
According to the indictment, Kalember was a guard at the Silos camp. The other defendants were members of the police, the army, and the civil administration in Hadzici.
The prosecution alleges that a large number of Serb civilians and prisoners of war were held illegally, inhumanely treated, tortured, subjected to grievous bodily harm and used as forced labour.
After ten days at the school, Kapetina said he was taken with other Serb prisoners to the Silos camp in nearby Tarcin.
“Before entering Silos, they ordered us to kneel and bow in prayer and they kicked us while we were doing it. A lot of people were beaten badly. Some guy called Beca, who was in charge, came and stopped them from beating us,” the witness said.
Kapetina said he was held at the camp for eight months before he was released in a prisoner exchange and that the conditions there were “terrible”.
He said that in the spring of 1992, he was given weapons by the Serb Democratic Party, which he turned over to “the Muslim authorities” in May that year.
However, under cross-examination, he admitted that before his arrest, he still had a semi-automatic rifle, a machine gun, a mine and a hand grenade.
The trial will resume on July 11.
