“The Mountain Wreath” and War in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Klickovic, the then President of the municipal wartime Presidency, did not deny having issued the order, but he said that it was a voluntary “evacuation” of Bosniaks from combat zones.

When Prosecutor Catrina Gustafsson said that only Bosniaks were displaced from the areas inhabited by mixed population, Klickovic said that only Bosniaks “felt endangered”. Also, he said that there were documents proving that their departure was voluntary.

Klickovic, whom the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina acquitted of charges for crimes in Bosanska Krupa under a second instance verdict, testified at the trial of Radovan Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, who is charged with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, terrorising Sarajevo residents and taking UN “blue helmets” hostage.

Prosecutor Gustafsson said that, in his epic titled “The Mountain Wreath”, Petar Petrovic-Njegos glorified the murder of “Muslims, or in fact converts to Islam”. Gustafsson quoted some verses from the epic, because Klickovic mentioned that, during the Bosniak war Karadzic often called upon the mentioned Njegos’ epic.

Among other things, the Prosecutor quoted a dialogue between Bishop Danilo and Vuk Micunovic, which, when translated from English, contained a call for “cleaning of our country from unbelievers” and said that “our battle will not be finished until either we or the Turks have been exterminated”. According to Prosecutor Gustafsson’s interpretation, this was “a call for ethnic cleansing of the country from Muslims”.

While opting out by saying that he had not studied Njegos’ epic, Klickovic said that associating “The Mountain Wreath” with crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina “goes outside the scope of good manners”.

“I condemn any type of destruction and killing,” Klickovic said.

When the Prosecutor said that he personally said that Karadzic “compared ‘The Mountain Wreath’ with the current events”, Klickovic said: “No, I did not hear this”.

During an additional examination Karadzic asked the witness “when Njegos lived and wrote the epic”. Klickovic responded: “At the time when Turks advanced to and occupied the Balkans, committed grave crimes and nearly destroyed the Christianity”.

Specifying that “The Mountain Wreath” was written in the 19th Century and that it described the events from the 17th Century, Karadzic illustrated the epic’s libertarian message by quoting the following verses: “Foot to place upon the Tyrant’s neck…this, of all human duties, is most sacred” and “Where the law lies in the mace, the smell of inhumanity fills the air”.

Karadzic presented the judges with witness KW-545, who testified during the closed part of the hearing.