Beatings and Rapes Recalled in HVO Camp
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Witness Hazba Nukic said that she was arrested and detained by Bosnian Croat forces in the “Polet” stadium in Bosanski Brod, northern Bosnia, on June 29, 1992.
After several days, she said she a fighter took her to an office, which she learned belonged to a woman called “Indira”.
“He brought me to Indira’s office, where there were five armed soldiers… They beat me with sticks, guns, rifle butts and kicked me. I had broken ribs and my spine was damaged,” Nukic said.
The woman said that “Indira” did not then hit her directly, but later told someone called some “Djudjan”, another detainee, to attack her in her presence.
“Djudjan tore my bra, squeezed my breasts, ripped my underwear, put his hand in the uterus… I screamed, and Indira said: ‘Let me slap the Chetnik whore’,” the witness recalled, adding that Indira then struck her herself.
Kameric, a wartime member of the 101st Bosanski Brod Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is accused of participating in the physical and mental abuse of Serbian and Bosniak civilians and prisoners of war detained at the police station and the FK Polet football stadium in Bosanski Brod from April to October 1992.
She is also charged with having participated in the sexual abuse of Hasba Nukic and of Andrija Djurdjanovic.
Nukic said that she did not know Kameric before the war, and only found out her name from other women who were detained with her in the “Polet” stadium.
The witness recognized the accused in the courtroom. “This lady with a bun, dressed in black,” Nukic said, pointing to the defendant.
She also said that she had been raped repeatedly in the stadium. “When I got better after the beatings, they raped me. It all lasted until the fall of Brod,” the witness said.
According to her, HVO fighters took other women to be raped. The witness said she still had nightmares and could not sleep because of everything she had experienced.
Defence counsel Lejla Covic asked why she did not mention the events involving Andrija Djurdjanovic in previous statements, to which Nukic replied that she had mentioned “Djudjan” each time. The trial continues on March 27.
