Prisoners ‘Severely Beaten’ at Bosnia’s Dretelj Camp

Prosecution witness Borivoje Petrovic told the court in Sarajevo on Tuesday recalled that he was among a group of prisoners who were immediately assaulted by guards when they arrived at the Dretelj detention camp near the town of Capljina on August 7, 1992.“The beating started immediately,” the witness recalled. He said he could not believe that “a man can beat another man as much”.The day before arriving at Dretelj, said Petrovic, two Croatian Defence Forces soldiers took him from his apartment to the nearby military infirmary in Mostar.He said that other prisoners told him that a man who pointed a gun at him and pretended to shoot was a military driver called Ivan Zelenika – one of the defendants in the trial – who drove them from Mostar to Dretelj .“He pulled the trigger and said: ‘What do you know, this one does not have any bullets,’” recalled the witness.Zelenika told the witness he was not a driver in the army, and suggested the name of another person.
“I cannot agree with you. You were the one sitting behind the wheel,” responded the witness.Zelenika is charged, alongside Srecko Herceg, Edib Buljubasic, Ivan Medic and Marina Grubisic-Fejzic, with crimes against imprisoned Serb civilians committed in 1992 in the Dretelj camp.According to the indictment, Zelenika was former officer of the Croatian Defence Forces, Herceg commander of Dretelj, Buljubasic deputy commander of the army barracks, while Medic and Grubisic-Fejzic were former guards.The indictment alleges that all of them tortured prisoners and forced them to do hard labour, and that several inmates died as a consequence.Witness Petrovic said he was put into a hangar at Dretelj together with a protected witness in the trial codenamed ‘C’, who was the one most badly beaten by the guards.“I don’t know how he managed to stay alive,” he said.He said that defendant Herceg, who he learned from other prisoners was a camp warden, also beat detainees.“They beat a person until they confessed to what they were charged with,” explained the witness.
Herceg however denied this.“I am telling you, I am not the person you are talking about. I can approach so you can see for yourself,” the defendant said while cross-examining the witness.The witness said that he was held at Dretelj until August 18, 1992, and that during that time, some prisoners were killed and some women were raped.“I was among the elderly, so I was not beaten as much as younger ones,” said Petrovic, who is now 85.
The trial will resume on November 5.