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Testifying at the trial of Mario Frimel, who is charged with crimes in Hrasno neighbourhood, Sarajevo, a Prosecution witness says that, during the war he saw Mladen Blagovcanin, known as Kiki, beaten up in “Ina” building, adding that he told him, after the war, that the indictee was one of the persons who beat him.
“The man was moaning. I did not know who he was. I turned him around and recognised Kiki. I asked him what happened. He said that he fell down the stairs. He was more dead than alive. He was beaten up so brutally that he was all covered with bruises,” witness Sakib Kustura said.
Kustura, former military policeman of the Army of BiH, said that his Commander Murat Komarica ordered him to take Blagovcanin to a military police building from which he was transferred to the Central Prison.
The witness said that he requested that Blagovcanin, whom he knew by his nickname Kiki, stayed at his place, but they did not allow him. He said that Blagovcanin came to him after having come out of the prison and that he returned to him the money he had given him to keep it when they had taken him to the military police building.
Kustura said that he heard, in a café after the war, that “Kiki and Mario Frimel had a verbal conflict”.
“Mario said: ‘I used to beat such Chetniks during the war. If need be, I will do it again’. Kiki said: ‘Those times have passed. You cannot beat me any more’,” the witness said.
Prosecutor Sead Krestalica reminded Kustura that he said, during the investigation in 2012, that: “Mario Frimel then provoked Kiki, telling him: I beat you up during the war. Do you want me to beat you again?” The witness responded by saying that it was probably true, because his memory was fresher at the time.
When asked by the Prosecution if he found out who beat Blagovcanin up, Kustura said that he told him that it was Mario and that he mentioned a Djamonja as well.
He disagreed with the Defence, who asked him if what happened in the café could have been a quarrel between “drunken” people.
The Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecution charges Mario Frimel, former Commander of “Ivan Krndelj” Squad of the Army of BiH, ABiH, with having unlawfully arrested and physically and mentally abused Serbs in Hrasno neighbourhood, Sarajevo.
Ermin Taric, former Frimel’s Deputy, said that, at the beginning of the war Kiki complained to him that some soldiers came to his apartment and searched it and that he proposed to him to join the civil protection unit or distribute humanitarian aid, but he refused to do it.
The trial is due to continue on September 18.
