Bosnian Witness Describes Igman Torture
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Witness Rajko Vitor described Hozic as a soldier who stood 179cm high and had blond hair and a scar over one eye. He said he gave Hodzic’s description during the investigation and that he “knows him like himself”.
Vitor, who testified via video link from Australia, said he was brought to Igman along with other Serbian prisoners from the “Krupa” building in the municipality of Hadzici in early February 1993.
Soon, he said, he met the soldier and noticed the scar over his eye, while he heard from other soldiers that he was called Nedzad Hodzic.
The witness recalled that, after he beat him Hodzic ordered him to say: “Masala” [“Bravo”]. “I had blood in my urine for five days,” the witness added.
He also said Hodzic once beat him after he made him lick his yellow [Volkswagen] Golf, parked near the hotel “Mraziste”, with his tongue.
Vitor said that Hodzic used a burning wire – and that he still had scars on his body because of it. He also burned his hair with a lighter. “I started crying because of the pain. I then wished I was dead,” the witness said.
He said that other soldiers beat him, too, but that he especially suffered from the consequences of Hadzic’s blows, and that, beside him “he does not care about anyone else”.
He also said that he saw Jadranko Glavas beaten and that he heard from a prisoner called Dragan Vukovic that Nedzad Hodzic had killed him.
He added that he also heard from two other prisoners that Hodzic took them to an unknown direction to bury Glavas’s body.
The defence said that prosecutor Vladimir Simovic had asked the witness leading questions, which is unacceptable.
The former member of the Bosnian Army’s “Zulfikar” squad is on trial together with Dzevad Salcin, also a former Zulfikar member, for crimes committed at Mt Igman in 1993.
Witness Vitor said that Vukovic told him that “Struja [Electricity] Salcin cut off half of his ear”.
Hodzic’s defence noted that Vitor’s testimony focused only on Hodzic and that was “very strange” that he did not remember anyone else but him.
The trial continues on March 21.
