Shot in the Back

Hazim Kuloglic said that he saw the pistol in Nikola Maric’s hand and Munib falling down the stairs.

“Blood from his chest was on the staircase. (…) When the stress happened, all of us ran back into the classrooms. Munib stayed there lying. When he left, we turned him around and saw a wound caused by a bullet penetrating through his body. There was blood on his back. He grasped for air,” Kuloglic recalled.  

He said that detainees carried Grcic to the school entrance and then went back to their rooms. He said that, at around midnight he noticed that he did not show any signs of life.  

Maric, former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with having committed persecutions by participating in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993.

Maric’s Defence requested the witness to describe the moment when the bullet was fired, and specify whether he saw that. The witness responded by saying: “I see Munib’s shirt. It looked as if air was blown under it. (…) The shirt flies away from his chest”.

Kuloglic, who recognised Niloka Maric in the courtroom, said that the indictee took six or seven detainees from the school building in late August or early September 1993 and that he had never seen them again.

“I went upstairs. Everybody was afraid of him. Whenever he came, we would stay quietly in the classrooms. He read six, seven names from a list. (…) I think that Bajro asked him for coffee, but he said: ‘You do not need coffee any more’. Bajro left. I have never seen him again in my life,” Kuloglic said.
 
Protected witness S-9 said that Nikola Maric took Grcic into the secondary school centre on August 3, 1993 and killed him on the staircase.  

“He took Munib, who had his hands on his nape, into the building. When he climbed the stairs halfway, he shot him in his back,” the witness said.  

S-9 recognised Maric in the courtroom, adding that he had known him before the war.
      
He specified that, from the place, where he was standing, he could not see Maric’s face, but he recognised him by his voice.  

S-9 said that he saw Maric again 20 days later, when he took six people away.

The trial is due to continue on June 2.