Bosnian Croat Fighter ‘Seized Prisoners from Prozor School’

Witness Mirza Begatas told the Sarajevo court on Thursday that he worked as a military policeman for the Bosnian Army and guarded Serb prisoners who were being held in the secondary school in Prozor in June 1993.

“[Defendant] Nikola Maric came and started hitting prisoners, and I defended them. Other members of the Croatian Defence Council then came and started hitting me,” Begatas recalled.

In mid-July 1993, Croatian Defence Council fighters then imprisoned Begatas along with other men from his village in the secondary school, where he met the defendant again.

“I saw him taking away six people… I knew them. Maric was reading the names of those people,” Begatas said, adding that he had learned from their families that they are still missing.

He said that the defendant’s brother Dragan once took his father aside, after which a shot was heard. He said that his father’s remains were only found seven years later.

Maric, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, is accused of participating in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993.

He is charged, amongst other things, with the murder of the witness’s father, Munib Grcic, the abuse of prisoners and the disappearance of six civilians from the secondary school in Prozor.

Another witness on Thursday, Izet Pilav, a former Bosnian Army soldier, said he was also held at the school, where he saw Maric taking away six people who disappeared without trace.

“Nikola Maric was a fearsome man,” the witness said, adding that he knew him personally.

He said that Maric and other Croatian Defence Council fighters once beat him while he was digging graves with other prisoners.

The trial continues on August 21.