Bosnian Serb Fighter Protector Not Rapist
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Former fighter Dragicevic, alias Krompir (Potato), said at his trial on Thursday that he knew the witness who accused him of raping her, but insisted that the allegation was not true.
I helped her get a job, because she lived on her own with her son. I was her protector. I told others that no one must lay a hand on her. She never came to my apartment, I saw her only in passing, said Dragicevic.
He said that he never touched the Muslim woman and never thought about sexually assaulting her because he did not have the genes for it.
Dragicevic is charged with robbing and abusing non-Serbs between May 1992 and December 1994 in the Sarajevo settlements of Grbavica, Vraca and Kovacici, and with raping one woman.
He said that in March 1992 he was hired as a military policeman with the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army.
I got a camouflage uniform, a Scorpion gun and two clips of ammunition. My activity was to patrol the terrain at [apartment blocks] Grbavica One and Two, said the defendant.
Dragicevic is charged with robbing and abusing non-Serbs between May 1992 and December 1994 in the Sarajevo settlements of Grbavica, Vraca and Kovacici, and with raping a woman.
He is alleged to have committed the robberies and abuse together with Veselin Batko Vlahovic, who was sentenced earlier this year to 45 years in prison after a separate trial in which he was found guilty of 60 different war crimes including around 35 murders and 11 rapes.
The trial will resume on August 14.
