Bosnian Serb Jail Chief ‘Broke Prisoner’s Ribs’

Prosecution witness Hilmo Sehic told the court in Sarajevo on Wednesday that he was taken with his son and around 150 other men to the Planjina Kuca detention centre in Vogosca in August 1992, where he saw the defendant Branko Vlaco.

“Branko Vlaco lined us all up. He told us he was the warden and Spiro his deputy,” said Sehic.

He said that at the detention centre, prisoners only got one meal a day, and that he once volunteered to go and work for his captors in order to get extra food.

“Vlaco told me: ‘You’re not giving out orders, I do’, and kicked me in the chest so hard that he broke my ribs,” recalled Sehic.

He said that Vlaco hit other prisoners too.

According to the prosecution, Vlaco was the warden of the Bunker, Planjina Kuca, Sonja and Nakina Garaza detention camps in Vogosca, where he established a system of abuse of imprisoned civilians. Prisoners were murdered, tortured and abused, forced to do hard labour and used as human shields. Many of them were killed and dozens are still considered missing.

Sehic said that he was used as a human shield three times by the Bosnian Serb Army and that his son Samir was once wounded while he worked for his captors on Zuc hill near Sarajevo.

“We were taken to do hard labour, dig trenches, cut wood,” Sehic said in his testimony, adding that Vlaco personally lined them up and chose who should go to work and where.

The trial continues on October 9.