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Ratko Avdalovic said that in mid-July 1992 he was brought to Viktor Bubanj, He was put in a cell, where cook Vintila, who was distributing food to prisoners, hit him. “His task was to distribute the food, but he would start up a fight on his own. He hit me with a fist and ladle in the head,” said the witness.
He said that cook Vintila was young, with “bloodshot eyes”. Asked by Dzevad Muratbegovic whether cook Vintila was in the courtroom, the witness pointed out to second defendant Iulian-Nicolae Vintila, and told him: “Bravo!”
Vintila is, together with Ramiz Avdovic, on trial for crimes committed in the Central Prison and former army barracks Viktor Bubanj. They are charged, as members of the joint criminal enterprise, with participating in establishment and maintenance of a system of abuse of Serb civilians.
According to the indictment, Avdovic was guard commander at the fifth floor of the Sarajevo District Prison and former barracks Viktor Bubanj, while Vintila was a cook and guard in the barracks. Emir Kapidzic, Vintila’s lawyer, said that the witness did not mention Vintila during investigation, nor he spoke of any meeting with the person who distributed food. The defence lawyer said that the witness described Vintila the same way he described previously in the investigation “guard Kemo”.
“Of the guards I know Kemo and the Colonel. Kemo hit me. He was blond, around thirty, with bloodshot eyes,” Kapidzic read a part of the witness’ original deposition. The Defence and Trial Chamber asked the witness whether before testimony he spoke to the prosecutor about Vintila, but the witness said that he didn’t.
“I heard about Vintila from prisoners. I also heard he was not a Muslim, but Romanian,” he said. Avdalovic said that in Viktor Bubanj he was hit by guard Kemo, who, people said, was a bully.
“One time I asked to go to the toilet. When I got out, he hit me with a hand so hard I thought the whole barracks were revolving. The blood was dripping and he put a glass underneath and told me to drink it. He wanted me to drink my own blood,” he said.
Gordana Botic, second witness at this hearing, said she was brought to Viktor Bubanj in 1992 and put in one of the cells. The conditions in the cell, she said, were very bad, and during her captivity she did hard labour as well.
“I scrubbed blood in the bathroom and that’s when I fainted,” she said.
She said that a man named Slavko Herceg was in charge of the guards in the facility. She left Viktor Bubanj on July 7, 1992, and, she added, now had psychological problems as a consequence of her imprisonment.
The trial will resume on November 1.
