Bosnian Serb Soldier Shot and Raped Neighbours
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Witness Jasmin Hajdarevic told the Sarajevo court on Monday that he was 13 years old in April 1992 when war started in the Visegrad area.
He said that shooting and tensions in his village of Dobrun, his mother sent him to stay with a friend in Montenegro while she remained at home.
A man called me in August 1992 and I was told that my mother also came to [the town of] Ulcinj [in Montenegro]. She was wounded and called me from the hospital, because she was hit with six fragments of a bullet. After she got better, we went to Novi Pazar and then to Denmark the following year, the witness recalled.
He said that his mother told him in Denmark that defendant Kovacevic came to Dobrun one day and asked her and a protected witness in the trial, codenamed S1, to find a villager called Mujo Gacko.
He threatened them and then, as my mother told me, he sent the protected witness S1 to find Mujo. After she was not able to find him, my mother said that she saw Petar going towards the religious school and heard the shots he fired. Petar returned and told my mother and witness S1 to bury Mujo, who he had killed, Hajdarevic said.
He said his mother told him that Kovacevic acted violently towards S1, and that he raped her.
My mother didnt say anything to me because she was ashamed, but I later learned from my grandmother and aunt that Kovacevic raped her too, he said.
The witness said that also he learned from his mother that Kovacevic, along with others, took two men from the village of Zlatnik, who were later killed.
Former Bosnian Serb soldier Kovacevic is charged with participating the detention, murders and rapes of Bosniak civilians in the Visegrad municipality from May until August 1992.
Among the charges are the accusations that he illegally detained civilians in Zlatnik and killed Mujo Gacko in Dobrun in August 1992 and ordered two local women to bury him. Kovacevic is also on trial for raping those two women.
During cross-examination, defence lawyer Petko Pavlovic asked the witness why he didnt say that Kovacevic raped his mother in his statement to Bosnias State Investigation and Protection Agency in 2011.
Until a few days ago I believed that didnt happen. I visited my relatives in the last few months and asked them to tell me everything that happened, Hajdarevic responded.
Pavlovic also asked the witness why he said earlier that his mother saw Kovacevic shoot Gacko in the head and now claims that she only heard the shots. Hajdarevic said that he had nightmares for years about what his mother went through and that he might have made a mistake.
The trial continues on November 10.
