Bosniak Witness Recalls Tensions and Beatings in Visegrad

Prosecution witness Fatma Zukic told the Sarajevo court on Wednesday said that the situation in the Visegrad area became tense after a group of Bosniak fighters seized a nearby dam and threatened to blow it up in April 1992.

Zukic said that the Yugoslav People’s Army provided security for local people for a while, but then withdrew.

“When the army retreated, there were raids, men and women were taken away, and houses were burned,” Zukic said.

She said that her husband was taken away from the field where he was working to the police station.

“He was beaten, he was bleeding from his ears, everywhere,” she recalled, bursting into tears.

She said that after the war, she found his body in a mass grave in the village of Slab near Zepa in 2001.

She said she knew the defendant Goran Popovic and his family, describing them as good neighbours.

She added she was surprised when the defendant’s father Jovan Popovic, who was armed, drunk and accompanied by other soldiers, came to her door asking for men.

“I did not see Goran, but I heard that he was mistreating prisoners at Uzamnica with a dog,” Zukic said, but did not specify who told her.

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.

Bosnian Serb forces detained Bosniak prisoners at the detention camp, a former military barracks.

Jovan Popovic was originally charged alongside Goran Popovic, but the elder man’s case was separated from his son’s due to illness. Both have denied the charges.

The trial continues on September 17.