Screams in Sarajevo Army Barracks

In 1992, Nenad Gogic was blindfolded and taken from his apartment to an unknown direction.

“They took me twice from there to the Railway School for the beating. I had it bad. Meho, with whom I used to drink, tied me up and beat me,” recalled the witness.

After spending two months imprisoned at an unknown location, he was taken to Viktor Bubanj. He arrived exhausted, which is why he was not beaten, but was “smacked from time to time.”

“I went to the doctor to treat my wounds from the Railway School. He changed my bandages roughly and told me: ‘You’re in pain now, but you were not in pain when you went to slaughter Muslims,” said Gogic.

He said that the conditions were poor. In two months his weight dropped to 30 kilograms. The food was bad, there was no hygiene whatsoever.

“Guards beat up people every day. You could hear screams all the time. Guard Kemo put a fear of God into everyone, why didn’t you bring me to testify against him? I don’t know these people,” said Gogic.

Iulian-Nicolae Vintila and Ramiz Avdovic are charged, as members of the joint criminal enterprise, with participating in the establishment and maintenance of the system of abuse of Serb prisoners between June and late November 1992. According to the indictment, Avdovic was guard commander and Vintila cook and guard in the former barracks.

Another witness, Momir Obucina, also testified. He has a permanent disability from the beating he received in the Central Prison in Sarajevo. From there, he was moved to Viktor Bubanj.

“No one touched me there. But you could hear crying and screams all the time. You could hear screams of women who pleaded: ‘Please, sir, don’t do it’,” said Obucina.

Asked by the defence, both witnesses said they heard about a man called Ramiz, but could not identify him in the courtroom. 

The trial will resume on August 30.