Selimovic’s Murder near Prozor

Ekrem Selimovic said that he slept in a house in a hamlet near Prozor on July 19, 1993, while his parents and brother were in a house next door.

“I heard footsteps just before daybreak. It was dawning… I climbed to the attic and looked at my parents’ front door. I saw that they took my father Mujo, my mother and brother Selim out,” Ekrem Selimovic said, adding that he recognized Nikola Maric.

The witness mentioned that Maric, who was dressed in black uniform and had a small-calibre rifle, hit his brother on his head and body with the rifle butt.

“My father was barefoot. My mother was telling them to let them dress themselves. Maric said: ‘They will not need it’,” Selimovic recalled, adding that they then got out of his sight.

As he said, sometime later he heard a gunshot from a light weapon that sounded like a small-calibre rifle or pistol. Soon later he heard another gunshot. As he said, everything began quiet afterwards and he lost consciousness.

Selimovic said that, on that same day his mother and witness S1 told him that Maric had killed his father Mujo, brother Selim and Omer Selimovic.

“I saw wounds on my brother’s head and marks, indicating that cigarettes were extinguished on his body. A puddle of blood was underneath my father. My father was 68 years old and used two canes for walking,” Selimovic said.

Selimovic said that he fled, along with a group of men, from Lug village to the territory controlled by the Army of BiH, while his mother and other women and children were deported from Prozor municipality.

Nikola Maric, former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged in 25 counts with having committed persecution by participating in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993.

According to the charges, in July 1993 Maric killed old man Mujo Selimovic, as well as his son Selim and cousin Omer Selimovic, in a village in Prozor municipality.

Testifying at this hearing, witnesses Meho and Senad Selimovic said that they were hiding in the woods, when they were told by Zlata Selimovic and S1 that Nikola Maric had killed Mujo, Selim and Omer Selimovic.

They said that they waited until the evening hours in order to help Ekrem Selimovic bury them and that they then continued hiding in the woods until they managed to reach the free territory.

The trial is due to continue on September 25.