Mother and Son Recall Prijedor Murders
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Prosecution witness Mujdzic recalled that in spring 1992 the situation in Carakovo was tense, which is why Bosniaks from the territory spent the nights in the woods.
She said that Bosniak villages were shelled in May, when her son, Bahrudin, was killed in front of their house.
Two months later, Mujdzic added, three Bosnian Serb soldiers that she did not know came to her house in Carakovo.
“My son, Mirzan, was in the house next to ours. He said he would not run away because he was not guilty of anything,” she recalled.
“The soldiers stopped by the house and one of them asked: ‘Old man, what are we going to do with this one?’ and the other one said to take him behind the house.
“Then one of the soldiers took Mirzan and asked him where the people were. Mirzan said he did not know and the soldier killed him,” the witness said.
She later saw a large number of soldiers next to her house and learnt that local Bosniaks had been killed at the nearby mosque.
The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Dragomir Soldat a.k.a. “Cica” [“Old Man”], together with Zoran Babic and Velemir Djuric with taking part in the expulsion, murder and other inhumane acts against non-Serb civilians from Prijedor between April and September 1992.
They are charged with taking Bosniak men from their homes in Carakovo, near Prijedor, on July 23, 1992, and then shooting them dead outside the mosque.
Another witness, Bego Mujdzic, Bahra’s son, also testified about these events. He recalled that on July 23 he was in his cousin’s garden, not far from his parents’ house and his brother Mirzan’s, when he heard a car arrive.
“I heard people being called out, but did not go. I heard a soldier ask: ‘What are we going to do with this one?’ and the reply: ‘Take him behind the house’.
“Then soldiers said: ‘Speak, where are the people?’ and my brother replied: ‘I don’t know, I swear on my mother’, and that is when the burst of fire could be heard. I heard my brother scream,” Mujdzic said.
The trial is set to resume on September 2.
