Chief in a Truck
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State Prosecution witness Alic said that she was hiding on the first floor of her house in June 1992, when a truck came to Kabernik village. She said that Vitomir Rackovic, whom she had known from before, was in the truck cab.
“The truck stopped near Hamed Tvrtkovic’s house. I then saw a large number of Serb soldiers. I saw Esad Mamledzija on the on the back of the truck. He was dressed in civil clothes,” the witness said, adding that the truck soon left towards Cancari village.
As she said, a short time later the truck came back again and stopped at the same place.
“Rackovic came out of the truck cab. Besides the soldiers and Esad, I saw some other people on the back of the truck. Besima Cancar and RV-2 were among them. Family members of RV-2 were crying and begging Vito to let her get off the truck. Vito then told RV-2 that she could get off, but Rasid, Hamed and Huso Tvrtkovic should get on the truck instead,” she said.
The witness said that, at that moment it became “clear that Rackovic was the boss” and that nobody could have told RV-2 to get off the truck without his order.
“He then got into the truck cab again and left towards Lijeska with all those people on the back of the truck. We have not heard anything about those persons after that,” Alic said.
Rackovic, former member of the Republika Srpska Army, is charged with having participated in attacks on Bosniak villages, detention, torture, forced disappearances of persons from the Visegrad area, as well as rape, in the period from May to the end of August 1992.
The indictment alleges that some of the unlawfully arrested persons have never been found, while the bodies of some of the civilians were exhumed at “Slap” location in Zepa in 2000.
Witness Alic said that a soldier mistreated her mother, but Petko Pavlovic, Defence attorney of the indictee, said that she did not mention that in her statement from 1994. She responded by saying that she did not know why it was not included in her statement, but she knew that it happened.
When asked by the Defence how Rackovic looked like at the time, the witness said that he was a large man, with slightly wavy hair and beard.
The Trial Chamber said that the second witness, who was due to testify at this trial was not capable of testifying, so a decision about that would be made at a later stage.
The trial is due to continue on July 2 with the examination of an expert witness in neuro-psychiatry.
