Indictee’s Help

Witness S.K. said that there fierce battles on June 12 and 13 and that they were on the front line at the Jewish Cemetery all the time, adding that the indictee, a then member of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, was there as well.

“The Jewish Cemetery, where our positions were, was attacked from Sirokaca… My brother and I had were having lunch on June 13, when a new attack began. We went to the Jewish Cemetery straight away,” the witness said.

As he said, his brother and a friend of his were wounded on that occasion. He said that Sladoje came and drove them to a hospital in Tilava village, where his brother died at 5.30 p.m.

Sladoje and Slobodan Bogdanovic are charged with having taken Bajro and Suad Besic to a garage, where they beat them, and then used them as human shields at the Jewish Cemetery on June 13, 1992. Suad Besic was killed on that occasion.

Witness S.K. Said that Sladoje drove him from the hospital to his parents’ summer house, adding that, following the funeral of his brother one day later, Sladoje drove them to Pale on June 15. He said that they then traveled from Pale to Belgrade.

S.K. said that he knew Sladoje as his neighbour from Ohridska Street and that the Besics too lived in the vicinity.

“While I was in Belgrade, I heard that they took the father and Suad across the Jewish Cemetery and that Bajro stayed alive,” the witness said, when asked whether he knew what happened to the Besics.

Testifying in defence of Bogdanovic, witness Sreto Lakic, who was a member of the reserve police forces just like the indictee, said that they were deployed to Milinkladska Street at the beginning of June as a resource unit.

“We stayed there until mid-July. Slobodan was there as well,” Lakic said, adding that people, who were located in two trenches, did not go home at all, because the situation was “critical”.

The trial is due to continue on January 28, when two witnesses will testify in defence of indictee Sladoje.