Bosniak Fighters Accused of Constant Prisoner Abuses

The Bosnian state prosecution read out a statement in court on Monday from a deceased witness who said that he was abused at Silos and other Bosnian Army-run detention camps.

Witness Dragan Vukovic said in a statement given to the Bosnian State Investigation and Protection Agency that he was captured when he was a soldier with the Second Sarajevo Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army in August 1992.

After his capture, he was transported to Mount Igman where Bosnian Army troops abused and humiliated him daily. He was was transferred to the Silos camp in Hadzici, where he was put in solitary confinement.

“There was no heating in the cell and it was cold. I was on the floor at first and then I got a wooden pallet. The days when I did not get beaten up were far and few between. Soldiers came and beat me and took me for questioning and I always said the same thing,” Vukovic said in the statement.

The witness added that two of the defendants in the trial, Becir Hujic and Halid Covic, beat him up while he was held at Silos and that Covic also took him out of his cell twice to be abused by Bosnian soldiers.

The prosecution charges Hujic and Covic along with Mustafa Djelilovic, Fadil Covic, Mirsad Sabic, Nezir Kazic, Serif Mesanovic and Nermin Kalember with crimes against civilians and prisoners of war in the Silos camp and other detenti0on facilities in the Hadzici municipality.

According to the indictment, between 1992 and 1996, they took part in a systematic joint criminal enterprise within which they committed crimes against Serb civilians and prisoners of war.

The indictment says that Becir Hujic and Halid Covic were the warden and deputy warden of the Silos camp. Nermin Kalember was a camp guard, while the rest of the defendants worked for the local civilian, military or police authorities.

Vukovic said that after a few months, he was taken back to Mount Igman, where he suffered further abuse and that he was finally freed as part of a prisoner exchange in August 1993 after spending a total of 365 days in captivity, during which he lost 50 kilogrammes.

After the reading of the statement, defence lawyers objected to large portions of Vukovic’s testimony because it focused on crimes committed on Mount Igman, which are not part of the indictment. Halid Covic’s lawyers also presented a statement that Vukovic gave to the Elementary Court in Doboj in 1997, in which he did not mention the defendant.

The trial will continue on Thursday.