“I May Have Shot Purak”

Adzic said that he was at the Base, drinking alcohol with other members of his unit, one day in the summer of 1993.

“I was wounded in my arm, but I returned from the hospital voluntarily. I was neither sent to the field nor assigned a gun. Somebody from that group told me that Nermin Purak had wounded me and that he too was wounded and that he was in the school building. My cousin Veljko Adzic took me there. All I can remember is that Veljo and I entered the classroom and that I stood above Purak. I was not assigned a pistol in my unit, but somebody gave it to me… I may have shot Purak,” Adzic recalled.

According to the indictee’s testimony, Jasmin Malicbegovic and Semir Derlic, whom he knew by sight, were present in that room, but he did not speak to them.

“I do not remember having broken an infusion bottle, threatened somebody else or that there were more than one gunshots…There are many things I do not remember. When we came there, I did not understand anything. I was shooting but I do not remember it well either. A few days later I was wounded for the second time and Veljko got killed. Soon after that I visited a doctor due to mental problems. I am a disabled war veteran now,” Adzic said.

Adzic, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with having come with another HVO member to a school building in Zepce, where wounded members of the Army of BiH were accommodated, in June 1993. He allegedly approached the beds, where two wounded men were just getting their infusions, broke the infusion bottles and, while constantly threatening the victims, shot at the wounded, who was just receiving his infusion, causing another bullet injury on his body.

The trial is due to continue on September 22.