This post is also available in: Bosnian
Zumra Kovac told the Court that she was transferred, along with other detainees, to a school building in Kalinovik at the beginning of June 1992. The witness said that Suad Hasanbegovic, who was beaten up several times, was among the prisoners. She said that she did not see who beat him up.
“He was beaten up so brutally that he had bruises all over his body,” Kovac said, adding that a body, which, as she thought, belonged to Hasanbegovic, was carried out of the school building at the beginning of August 1992. As she said, the body was wrapped in a military blanket and loaded onto a truck.
The witness claims to have heard screams and shooting during that same night that Hasanbegovic was beaten up. She said that she had known Hasanbegovic from before.
Kovac said that other prisoners told her that a certain Vojvoda, whose name, as they said, was Novica Tripkovic, as well as the Bjelicas, used to come to the school building in Kalinovik.
She said that Vojvoda came four times and pointed his finger at her child, saying that they “needed him as a human shield”.
The witness pointed out that, in a water trough in the school she saw a young man’s body. She said she thought that his name was Edin Bico.
When asked whether the event involving Edin Bico happened on the same day as the even involving Hasanbegovic, the witness said that, according to her estimates, it did.
Marinko and Zoran Bjelica as well as Novica Tripkovic, former members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, are charged with having participated in the murder and torture of Bosniak civilians, who were detained in “Miladin Radojevic” school building in Kalinovik, in August 1992.
Testifying as the second witness at this hearing, protected witness S7 said that she thought that “Bjelica’s men took Suad Hasanbegovic away”. S7 saw that Hasanbegovic was beaten up.
“I heard that they were beating him upstairs. I heard screams, cries and wailing. I did not hear a gunshot,” witness S7 said, adding that Suad was taken away on August 5 and that he never came back again.
The trial is due to continue on October 1.
