Camp Warden ‘Sent Prisoners to Frontline’

Prosecution witness Zijad Avdibegovic told the court on Wednesday that at the start of the war, he was asked to make a list of Bosniaks in his village of Kadarici, but he refused and escaped to the woods with a man named Jasmin Alispahic, and hid there for 25 days.

“They captured Alispahic first and he has been considered missing ever since. They caught me later when I was looking for food,” recalled Avdibegovic.

In mid-August 1992, several weeks after his arrest, he was transferred to the Planjina Kuca detention centre in Vogosca where the defendant Branko Vlaco allegedly worked as a warden.

The witness said he was often sent from the detention centre to do hard labour.

“We mostly dug trenches and underground shelters and cut wood,” he said.

He said that on September 18, around 50 prisoners from Planjina Kuca were selected to go to the nearby Zuc hill.

“We were hand-picked by the warden, they called him Vlaco. He was choosing randomly – ‘you, you, you…’” recalled Avdibegovic.

The witness said they were taken in groups past Bosnian Serb troops towards the frontline which was under the control of the Bosnian Army, where one of the prisoners was wounded.

“I received an order to pull him out, and that is when I was wounded in the spine. I lost consciousness,” said Avdibegovic.

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 to abuse 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.

The trial is set to resume on October 23.