Indictees Alukic and Hirkic Helped the Witness

Witness Husein Memic told the Court that he was captured, along with a group of other people, and taken to the detention camp following an attack by Serb forces on Kozarac, Prijedor municipality, on May 24, 1992.

“I was in my house when the attack began. All of a sudden we heard grenades and shooting. I fled to my neighbour’s, as his house had a basement. We were hiding in the basement until tanks came to Kozarac. We then ran away to the woods towards Mount Kozara,” he said.

He said that, while listening to a portable radio on the second day of their stay in the woods, they heard that they should surrender. That is what they did.

“Although we carried white flags, when we came down to the village, grenades began falling. One of them hit the corner of a house. Several people from the group were killed in the explosion,” Memic said.

The witness said that they surrendered to soldiers in Kozarac, adding that the soldiers separated men from women and children. He said that he stayed in Omarska detention camp for 72 days.

“While I was there, I used to see Ostoja Baltic, who was dressed in military uniform. He had a pistol,” Memic said.

Alukic, who is on trial together with Fikret Hirkic, is charged with having participated, along with other persons, in the murder of civilian Ostoja Baltic on the trunk road between Prijedor and Banja Luka on August 29, 1992.

He said that he knew Bozo Indjic as well and that he doubted that he was a member of the Army, considering the fact that he was an elderly person and that he had retired long before the war.

Alukic and Hirkic, who were allegedly accompanied by other persons, are charged with having killed Bozo Indjic from Podgradje on August 29, 1992, while shooting around a house in Podgradje hamlet, near Prijedor, and cursing a “Serbian mother” on August 29, 1992.

Second witness Rasim Kahrimanovic told the Court that he was in Kozarac, when the attack happened, and that he was wounded.  

“I stayed inside the house for some time and watched the horrible images, houses being set on fire, old people being killed and so on. Some time later I too went to the forest on Mount Kozara. As I was wounded, Alukic and Hirkic took care of me in the woods. Had Alukic not helped me, I would not have stayed alive. He dressed my wounds, washed the bandages and took care of me,” Kahrimanovic said.

Defence witness Elvira Mujic also spoke about the attack on Kozarac.  

“When the attack on Kozarac began on May 24, 1992, I fled with my family to Basica Poljana, where we had previously made dug outs, so we could hide in them. Several other dug outs, in which a few other families were hiding, were there as well,” she said.