On the Frontline with Indictee

Radomir Zivkovic said that he went to the defence line at Zaglavak at the beginning of June 1992 together with about 70 other soldiers. As he said, indictee Vitomir Rackovic was among those soldiers.
 
“While we were up there, I saw and spoke to Vitomir Rackovic many times,” he said, adding that he had known Rackovic from before the war and that he was a good man.
 
Zivkovic said that all of them stayed at Zaglavak until July 12, 1992 and that none of the soldiers could leave the frontline.
 
“When we withdrew from the frontline, I think that Vito Rackovic went home, because, a short time later I heard that he was wounded and that he underwent medical treatment somewhere,” he said.
 
Rackovic, a former member of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, is charged with having participated in attacks on Bosniak villages, detention, torture, forced disappearances of persons from the Visegrad area, as well as rape, from May to the end of August 1992.
 
The indictment alleges that some of the unlawfully arrested persons have never been found, while bodies of some of the civilians were exhumed at Slap in Zepa in 2000.
 
Second witness Zelimir Djuric told the Court that, on May 31, 1992 he went, together with two military policemen, to Orahovci village in order to check whether local Bosniak residents were detained in the school building. The witness explained that they were told in the Command building that, in case they found any detainees in the school, they should release them.  
 
“We went there and saw some people in front of the school building. We did not know them. We did not dare ask who they were. We entered the school building and saw 15 or 20 local residents. Braco Pecikoza asked them if they had been mistreated and whether they had had enough food. They were told that they would be released. He asked them how they got there. They said that the men, who were standing in front of the school building, had brought them,” the witness said.
 
He told the Court that he did not see Vitomir Rackovic, whom he had known from before the war, in front of the school in Orahovci on that day.
 
Prosecutor Dzevad Muratbegovic asked the witness how he remembered having been in Orahovci on May 31, 1992 and not on some other date. The witness responded by saying that he remembered the date, because it was his first visit to the village.
 
Testifying at this hearing, Milovan Nikolic said that he used to work in “Granit” company in Visegrad, just like the indictee. He said that he had never seen the indictee driving a vehicle.
 
The trial is due to continue on November 19, when two new Defence witnesses will be examined.