Bleeding Caused by Beating

Witness Milos Celic said that a military policeman beat him up in a cell in the Public Safety Station in Kladanj, where he had been brought from nearby Stupari in order to state where his gun was.
 
“He hit me on my kidneys for the fifth time, making me lose consciousness,” the witness said, adding that blood began pouring from his nose, mouth and left ear later on and that there was blood in his urine too. 
 
He mentioned that the military policeman, whom he described as a rather tall, blonde and stocky man, beat him with a rifle butt and his legs, while wearing his military boots on. He said that, when he described the person, who beat him, to an acquaintance of his, who was also taken to Kladanj, the man told him that the person’s name was Osman Gogic.
 
Gogic, former military policeman with the Military Police Squad in Kladanj, is charged with having beaten witness Celic. Gogic is on trial, along with Safet Mujcinovic, Selman Busnov, Nusret Muhic, Zijad Hamzic, Ramiz Halilovic, Nedzad Hodzic and Hariz Habibovic, former members of the Territorial Defence, military and civil police, for committing crimes in Kladanj.
 
The witness said that, prior to being taken to Kladanj, he was taken, along with other Serb civilians, to the education workers’ building in Stupari on June 1, 1992. He was not able to confirm who accompanied two reserve civil policemen, who came to pick them up, although he said, in his statement given during the investigation, that it was Halilovic, who, according to the charges, was an active policeman with the Police Station in Stupari.
 
The witness told the Court that, while they were in the buildings, Halilovic took some of them to Serb villages in order to take food.
 
“Civil police guarded the building from the first day after we had been brought to it,” he said.
 
He said that Mujcinovic, who, according to his testimony, was Commander of the Police Station in Stupari, came to the building and visited the rooms and that policemen sometimes had coffee or brandy with them.
 
He recalled the day when he was brought to the school building in Stupari, where he saw Mujcinovic and inspector Nusret Muhic, who asked him to hand his weapon over. According to the charges, Muhic was Chief of the Group for Prevention of and Fight against Crime with the Public Safety Station in Kladanj.
 
The witness said that, when he left reserve police forces at the beginning of 1992, he handed his gun over. As he said, he was taken from the school building to the Police Station in Stupari, where Kahro Vejzovic asked him where his gun was, threatened him by saying that he would slaughter him and hit him on his back with a rifle butt and leg a few times.
 
As per an order given by Muhic, the witness was then transferred to the police building in Kladanj, where he spent four days. Military policeman, whose name, as he heard, was Gogic, beat him up a few times, but not as brutally as the first time.
 
According to the witness’ testimony, Muhic examined him almost every day. The witness decided to say that he had a gun, so he went to a place near Kladanj, together with Muhic and another person, and showed them the gun. He was then brought back to the cell. He explained that the gun did not belong to him, but to a local resident from a nearby village.
 
“Muhic came and said that we would go to Stupari,” the witness said, adding that he was sentenced to six months for illegal weapon possession in Tuzla, where a military prison was located, in late 1992.
 
The witness said that he and some other men were sentenced again to five years in prison in Tuzla in April 1993 for having refused to become member of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He stayed in the military prison in Tuzla until July 21, 1993, when he was exchanged. 
 
The Defence teams of the indictees are due to examine the witness on Friday, September 6.