Bosniak Soldiers Trial for Killing Croat Civilians Opens
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Witness Nedzad Sivro told the Sarajevo court on Friday that he went from the village of Poculice in the Vitez municipality to the nearby settlement of Vrhovine in April 1993, where he saw [local villager] Refik Mujezinovic talking to an unknown soldier.
I was far away and I do not know what they talked about. They got in a car and left towards Poculice. Several minutes later, I heard gunfire from an automatic rifle, one burst, then another one. After 20 minutes to half an hour, I went home. When I came home, I saw a mess; cars and wounded people, he said.
The defence asked the witness whether he saw Mujezinovic or the car there, but the witness said he did not.
The witness said that the soldier with whom Mujezinovic was speaking was a younger man of average height, wearing a camouflage uniform and holding a rifle.
Jasmin Coloman, a former member of the Reconnaissance Squad of the Bosnian Armys 7th Muslim Brigade, is charged with going to the local community centre in the village of Poculice, where Croat civilians were imprisoned, on April 24, 1993. After a guard refused to let him in, he fired several shots through the closed door, killing three Croats and wounding nine other people, the indictment alleges.
The defence reminded the witness that he said in a statement during the investigation that no one from Poculice or nearby villages committed the murders, and the witness confirmed he said that.
Before Sivro started testifying, the prosecution read out the indictment and presented its opening arguments, saying that with witness testimonies and material evidence, it would prove that defendant Coloman committed the crime.
But Colomans lawyer Senad Dupovac said that the defence would prove that his client did not take part in the killings at the community centre.
The defence does not dispute that there was a conflict between the Croatian Defense Council and Bosnian Army at the time, nor there was a crime in the centre in Poculica, but it does dispute that the defendant participated in that crime, the lawyer said.
The trial continues on September 19.
