Bosniak Teenagers Father Murdered by Croat Fighter
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Prosecution witness Elvedin Grcic told the court in Sarajevo on Monday that he was 16 years old in August 1993, when military policemen and Croatian Defence Council fighters came to his home in Prozor and took him and his brother to an improvised jail at the local fire station, leaving his father Munib at home.
Around 35 and 40 Bosniaks were already imprisoned there. The conditions were terrible, bloody blankets, bloody walls, Grcic said, adding that the detainees were taken to do forced labour every day.
He said that the defendant Nikola Maric, who he described as a member of the Croatian Defence Councils notorious Kinder squad unit, once took him and another prisoner to clean a local bar.
He asked me then who was my father and where was my father, Grcic said.
The witness said that he was later told by other prisoners that his father had been killed at a secondary school in Prozor where he was being detained.
It was only in 1997 that I learned that Nikola Maric killed my father with a rifle by shooting him in the back in the high school centre. Esed Beganovic, Hazim Kulagic, [a protected witness in Marics trial codenamed] S-9, Damir Hadzic and others told me that, he said.
He added that he has never found his fathers body.
Maric, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, is charged with participating in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993.
According to the indictment, Maric killed Munib Grcic in August 1993.
Witness Alija Ramic also testified on Monday that his daughter told him that Maric mistreated her by putting a gun in her mouth and that his son said that the defendant beat him.
A further witness, Mustafa Demirovic, testified that Maric opened fire in front of his legs.
The trial continues on June 12.
