Gun to the Back of Defendants Head
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The protected witness code-named S-24 was hired with another woman to clean the military police building in Bratunac.
One morning when we came to work, we found the office in a weird state. There was a spatter of blood on the walls and we cleaned it all up. A colleague of ours told us that the night before, Peki from White Eagles apprehended someone and brought him in there, said S-24, adding that she later learnt that the person arrested was called Fehim Kurtic.
After that, she said, Babic resigned and soon afterwards left the military police. She said Babic had trouble because he did not allow dishonest behaviour in the military police.
Then Peki put a gun to the back of his head. If it hadnt been for other colleagues, he would have shot him, recalled S-24.
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-24 said that people talked that White Eagles regularly went inside the school and tortured the prisoners.
Asked by the defence of Savo Babic, the witness said she thought the defendant was not in charge of prisoners in the school, but the volunteers and crisis headquarters, which made decisions about everything.
The witness said that the military police was formed in 1992 and that its commander was Savo Babic.
I knew him from before as a good man. He worked somewhere in the regular police… said S-24.
The prosecutor, Dika Omerovic, reminded the witness that during investigation she claimed that Savo Babic had been a police commander before the war. The witness said she gave her earlier deposition under pressure and in fear.
The witness said that she and her colleague were also tasked with bringing food from a restaurant to people locked up in the schools gymnasium. She would be escorted by military policemen to the door, where the food was taken over by unknown guards.
Serbs who lost their children threw rocks at us when we were bringing prisoners their food. One of them even shot at me, recalled S-24.
The trial will resume on September 30.
