Killed While Fetching Milk for Baby

Hazim Hodzic told the Court that he used to live in Gracanica village, Prozor municipality, and that setting houses on fire and expelling people from his and the surrounding villages began in April 1993. He said that Nikola Maric, known as Nidzo, participated in that.
 
“I knew him before the war. I used to see him after the end of the war as well. We once had a beer sitting in the same company. He was a fishing attendant. I believe that he knows me as well,” Hodzic said, adding that a soldier, who had marks of the Licka Brigade of the Croatian Army on his uniform, told him that Maric killed three people in Paros village, Prozor municipality.
 
Hodzic said that, besides the Croatian Army, the Kinder Squad, which was led by Maric, came to his village. He said that Maric ordered all men from his village to climb on a truck, where men from other villages had already been.
 
“On that day he had a black uniform and a kerchief on his head. He surely had a pistol and automatic rifle,” the witness recalled, adding that he managed to flee from the truck and hide in Tolovac mountain village, Prozor municipality, with his family for a few days.
 
Hodzic said that the Kinder Squad, consisting of exactly thirteen soldiers, including the indictee, came to Tolovac on July 19.
 
“Nidzo shot at Saban Munikoza, while he was running down the hill towards a wheat field. I was in the shrubs. Had I not been there, I would not have been here now,” the witness said, adding that several other people were killed in the village on that day. He said that Bajro Munikoza and his father Saban Hodzic, who was disabled and was on his way to fetch some milk for a baby born in the forest, were among the killed people.
 
The witness said that he had still not found his father’s body, but he thought that Nikola Maric knew who had killed him.
 
Nikola Maric, former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with the persecution in 25 counts. He is charged with having participated in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993. According to the charges, among other things, at the beginning of July 1993 Maric killed Bajro Munikoza in Tolovac village and Mujo, Omer and Selim Selimovic in Prajm village, Prozor municipality.
 
Testifying as the second witness at this hearing, protected witness S19 said that he went to frontlines together with Nikola Maric, when one side was held by the HVO and ABiH and the other by the Republika Srpska Army, VRS. He mentioned that he was captured in late November 1992, shortly after the HVO had occupied Prozorm and taken, along with about fifteen other men, to the Fire Brigade House.
 
“They took us out in pairs in order to examine and beat us up on the upper floor. (…) Mr. Nikola asked us where our weapons were and, even before we answered, he began hitting us with his legs, fists and baton. He hit me with an electric shocker as well,” S-19 recalled.
 
This witness told the Court that he hit Nikola Maric back, but he then put a pistol on his head.
 
“I still do not know why he did not kill me,” S19 said, adding that he was transferred, together with other men, from the Fire Brigade House to the Police Station and that they were then released home.  
 
Also, he said that he saw the murder of Saban Munikoza in Tolovac village, but he did not see who shot at him, adding that members of Hodzic family got killed in that same village as well.
 
Testifying at this hearing, Mirsad Munikoza said that his father, mother and brother were killed in Tolovac village and that he heard that they were killed by Nikola Maric. The witness said that he saw bodies of three killed members of Selimovic family while passing through Prajm village.
 
The trial is due to continue on November 6.