Bosnian Prisoners ‘Suffocated to Death’ at School Jail

The protected prosecution witness codenamed ‘S-6’ told the court in Sarajevo on Monday that he saw defendant Babic twice at the primary school where he was held captive with several hundred other civilian prisoners.

He said that on May 10, 1992, he was taken to the school with other men from the stadium where people from Bratunac and the area around it were being held by Bosnian Serb forces.

“That’s where we met around thirty beaten, nearly dead people,” said S-6.

He described the conditions in the school’s gymnasium as horrific.

“Nine people suffocated from a lack of air alone, there was not enough food. I set off to the toilet once, but I returned when I saw ten centimetres of blood on the locker room’s floor,” he recalled.

He said he witnessed beatings every day, as well as people being taken away and killed.

In the evenings, guards would beat the prisoners and then say “Good night, sleep well”, he added.

“The people who beat up and killed other people were called Bane, ‘the Macedonian’ and Milic. Milic killed 27 people in one day. One of them poured a beer for [a prisoner who was a Muslim cleric] and forced him to raise three fingers in the air [in a Serb salute] and then finished him off,” he continued.

According to the witness, Savo Babic came to the school gymnasium twice – the first time to see the detainees on their arrival, the second before they were to be exchanged for Bosnian Serb prisoners, when he told them they were going back to their families.

The prosecution charges Babic, then commander of the military police in Bratunac, with ordering, carrying out and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the school in May 1992.

Around 400 detained civilians were beaten and tortured every day, and several dozen were killed or died as a result of the conditions at the school, the indictment alleges.

S-6 said that he learned from other prisoners that at the time they were held in the school, Babic was the commander of the military police.

“He did not kill anyone in the gymnasium, nor did anything happen when he came,” recalled the witness.

The trial is set to resume on September 16.