Croat Prisoner Recalls Rape By Bosnian Officer

The protected prosecution witness codenamed ‘H’ told the court in Sarajevo on Thursday that Bojadzic raped her in a car in Donja Jablanica on the night of July 28, 1993.

“He lowered the seat, I resisted, but to no avail… He hit me, ripped my dress off and raped me,” she said, in tears.

The witness said that at the time she was imprisoned in the Battle of Neretva museum in Jablanica with other Bosnian Croats who had been detained after the Bosnian Army drove them out of the village of Doljani near Jablanica.

She said that a tall blond man picked her out and another protected witness codenamed D, and told them to come out.

“I did not look much at him… I don’t know how he was dressed,” she said.

She said that this man, and another younger one similar to him, drove them to the Rogica Kuce detention centre in a jeep. The tall blond man, she said, took protected witness D to one of the houses at Rogica Kuce.

The other man then took her to a building in Jablanica, where a woman threw him keys from the balcony and they came back to Rogica Kuce, where she was raped inside the car.

She said that the tall blond man soon returned with the other protected witness, who was 16 or 17 at the time, and they were taken back to the museum and locked up again.

She said that protected witness D was in tears, but she did not talk to her, just assumed that she had also been raped.

A day or two later, they were taken from the museum to a doctor, who confirmed that they had been raped, and were questioned at the police station in Jablanica.

Bojadzic, former deputy commander of the Zulfikar detachment of the Bosnian Army, is charged with the rape, sexual abuse and beating of Croat prisoners held in the Battle of Neretva museum.

The witness said that once she saw the tall blond man outside the museum talking to some people, and heard one of them call him ‘Nihad’.

Bojadzic’s lawyer pointed out during cross-examination that H had described some parts of the incident differently when she spoke to policemen in Jablanica on July 30, 1993, and detailed a series of discrepancies.

“Maybe, I don’t know now,” the witness responded.

The trial will resume on November 7.