Hit with a Wooden Baton
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“He would come in and say: ‘Stand up’. He would ask if we were OK. When they said they were not, he told them: ‘It will stay that way.’ (…) He hit us on our heads, kidneys with a baton…” Goran Varagic said.
Responding to Defence’s questions, the witness explained that he was accompanied by a Deba, Pile and a woman named Sabina on that occasion, adding that Hodzic hit him more than the others.
“You turn your head towards the wall, so you do not know who is hitting you. (…) Yes, I did see well who was hitting me,” the witness said.
He said that he was abused while digging trenches 90 percent of the time.
Witness Varagic said that he heard Hodzic’s name from other soldiers on Mount Igman and that he heard that they used to call him Necko. He confirmed that he recognized Hodzic on the basis of a photograph, presented to him by Prosecutor Vesna Budimir in Chicago.
He specified that he recognized Hodzic by a scar on his head. The Defence presented a photograph to him. The witness confirmed that this was the only photograph he had been shown in order to identify the indictee.
“This photograph is not very good,” the witness said. When asked where, on that photograph, he saw the scar, the witness said that he could not see it.
The witness mentioned that, when he first saw him, Hodzic had a scar on the left part of his head, which went across his forehead towards the temples.
Varagic recalled that Hodzic once accused him of trying to flee, took him behind the “Mraziste” hotel and punched him.
As he said, when he got tired, Hodzic ordered him to fight with Mladen Borovic and then ordered them to play Russian roulette.
Nedzad Hodzic and Dzevad Salcin, also known as Struja, former members of “Zulfikar” Unit of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH, are on trial for crimes on Mount Igman in 1993.
The witness said that Dragan Vukovic told him that “Struja took a knife and cut his ear off” and that he saw that half of his ear was cut off. He said that Struja and two more people beat him up with sneakers.
“Struja was member of the Army… I heard that he was originally from Gacko,” the witness said.
Varagic said that he did not recognise Struja on photographs a few years ago.
Salcin’s Defence attorney Kerim Celik said that, although the witness had given several statements, he had never mentioned having been mistreated by Struja except in his statement given to the Prosecutor in Chicago. Also, he said that, in the mentioned statement it was not said that the identification of Struja was done.
The trial is due to continue on August 28.
