Beatings in Sarajevo Prison Barracks

The witness, Tihomir Ivkovic, said that in 1992 he was taken from his apartment to the offices of the railway secondary school twice. One night, he was moved from there to Viktor Bubanj.

“We were greeted there by a group of guards who moved us into the barracks hall by shouting at us. They put us to the wall, hit us with batons and kicked us… I was kicked twice, but it cannot be compared to the blows some of the others received,” said the witness.

He added that Besim Muderizovic and Ramiz Avdovic were present in the barracks at the time.

Ramiz Avdovic and Iulian-Nicolae Vintila are being tried for crimes committed in the Central Prison and Viktor Bubanj former army barraks.

They are charged, as members of the joint criminal enterprise, with participating in the establishment and maintenance of an abuse system of Serb civilians between June and late November 1992.

According to the indictment, Avdovic was at the time, a guard commander on the fifth floor of the District Prison in Sarajevo and the former barracks at Viktor Bubanj, while Vintila was a cook and guard in the former barracks.

Besim Muderizovic was together charged with Avdovic and Vintila, but he died in early December last year.
Ivkovic said that during his captivity in Viktor Bubanj he saw Avdovic on several occasions.

“I spotted Avdovic when I would go to the toilet or somewhere else, but he never came to the cell quarters,” the witness said.

He described Avdovic as a younger chubby man who “looked authoritative to his subordinates”.

Speaking about conditions in the former barracks, the witness said that there was not enough food, and that the hygiene was very poor. He added that some guards were aggressive to prisoners, while others behaved decently.
“Some of them took people out of the cells at night and beat them,” said Ivkovic, adding that it did not happen to him.

The trial resumes on September 27.