Bosniak Recalls Rape at Serb Detention Camp

The protected prosecution witness codenamed S-3 told the Sarajevo court that she and her husband, who lived in the Visegrad area, were taken in for questioning by police one day in 1992.

“They took my husband in and told me to sit down… They later told me to go home with my child, and my husband has never come back,” the witness said.

Around 15 days later, she said, the Bosnian Serb Army started burning her village, and took her and her three-year-old daughter to an orphanage, where she stayed for a month.

After that, she said, she was taken to the prison camp at the Uzamnica military barracks just outside Visegrad, where Bosniak civilians were being detained, while her daughter remained in the orphanage.

She said that guards called Mico and Goran took her out of the hangar with another female prisoner, and ordered two male prisoners to rape them on the grass outside.

“You are ashamed because everybody is watching. There were some soldiers who were watching. They were laughing,” the witness recalled.

S-3 pointed out the defendant Goran Popovic in the courtroom, saying that he looked like the guard she knew as Goran.

The Bosnian prosecution charges Popovic with participation in the abuse, beating and torture of prisoners while he was a guard at the Uzamnica detention camp, as well as the sexual abuse of men and women.

S-3 said that the prisoners were taken from Uzamica to do forced labour, adding that the guard called Goran made the Muslims eat pork.

The trial continues on August 27.