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Zumreta Kos, who lived in her family home in Novo Sarajevo at the start of the war, said that on June 13, 1992 Slobodan Bogdanovic came to the house of the Begic family with his younger brother.
“First they came for Bajro and took him. When they took him, they stayed in front of a garage and stayed a while. I saw it from my window. After 15 minutes they took Suad as well”, said Kos, who recognized Bogdanovic in the courtroom.
The witness said that later on she heard that Bajro and Suad were taken to the Jewish cemetery, where they were used as human shield.
Slobodan Bogdanovic and Goran Sladoje deny charges of war crimes against the civilian population in Sarajevo. The former “members of military-police forces” are charged with having committed crimes in Grbavica neighbourhood, Sarajevo, during the Bosnian war.
According to the Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecution’s charges, they physically abused two persons, before taking them to the Jewish Cemetery, where they used them as human shields. One person was killed on that occasion.
Kos said that after this she saw Bajro Besic who told her that his son was killed in the Jewish cemetery, but did not reveal who killed him.
“He said he heard the shots”, she said.
Answering the Defence team questions on whether Bogdanovic ever mistreated the Basic’s, the witness said he did not.
She said she knew the second defendants Sladoje, because he was her neighbor. She said she saw him beating Rajko Simic.
“It was a horrific site. At the end he threw him down and hit him with a baton. I didn’t think he would make it”, she said.
After the Defence presented her with an earlier statement in which she said that other than Sladoje, two other men hit Simic, Kos said: “They did, only I didn’t know them”.
The witness also said her brother and husband were taken in September 1992 and killed. She left Grbavica a day later and found their bodies after the war.
The trial will resume on December 6.
