Severed Head Seen in Bosnia School Jail

The protected witness codenamed ‘S-1’ told the court in Sarajevo on Monday that he saw a lot of beatings and murders at the Vuk Karadzic primary school in the town of Bratunac, where he and other Bosniaks were held captive by Serb forces in 1992.

“In the toilet, the blood came up to the ankles. I saw a severed human head,” said S-1.

He said that before being locked up in the school, he was first taken to a stadium in Bratunac along with his family and other Bosniak civilians.

“By the road, on a tree stump, there was a skull with a wig, and a bloody hatchet in it,” he recalled.

In previous testimony, S-1 said he saw the defendant Savo Babic at the Vuk Karadzic primary school twice.

Babic is charged, as commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s military police in Bratunac, with ordering, carrying out and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the school in May 1992.

According to the indictment, over 400 civilians were locked up at the school, several dozen of whom were murdered or died due to the conditions in the school, while others were beaten.

The trial will resume on September 9.