Defendant Burned Down Witness’s House
This post is also available in: Bosnian
“Zoran Marinic and one other man broke down the door and asked for my husband, who left through the window,” recalled B-4, adding that she had known Marinic since he was five years old.
She said that Marinic set her furniture on fire with a lighter in two rooms. The witness asked him to allow her to bring out the children’s stuff, but he told her: “You don’t need it, we came here to kill you.
“When I asked him why he was doing this to me and whether he knew me, he said: ‘I know you, you fed me like a mother’ and he just shrugged,” recalled B-4.
The witness said that the other man put a knife to her throat, and then pointed a rifle at her and fired a shot above her head.
“The children were crying while bullets flew around them. We all shouted, the whole village echoed. The children pleaded: ‘Don’t harm our mother’,” the witness said.
As members of the Croatian Defence Council, Zoran Marinic and Zoran Milic are charged with participation in the murder of four Bosniaks in Busovaca in 1993, inflicting bodily harm, and illegal and self-willed destruction of property.
B-4 said that her husband was hiding under the window all the time and listened in to what was going on. Marinic and the other man left their house and ordered to wait for them.
“In couple of minutes we went out too, and my husband joined us. We went to our neighbour, Ivo Budimir, and stayed there till the morning,” the witness said.
She added that Marinic and Maric returned to their house and shot at the roof, which caused a fire and the whole house burnt down.
In the morning, B-4 learnt that people were killed in the Topalovic home, and afterwards she saw the bodies herself in front of the burnt house.
While testifying from another room with a scrambled image, she added she was afraid, because the defendant, whom she knows, has freedom of movement and often comes to her house.
The defendant is on parole during the trial.
B-4 was the last witness for the prosecution. The trial will resume on October 17 when new physical items will be entered into evidence.
