Witness Receives Threats From Former HVO Soldier
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According to Karalic, she was instructed through middlemen of the defendant not to testify against him.
Judge and trial chamber chairwoman Suada Kahric informed both the prosecution and the defense about these threats.
“This is the first time I have heard about it,” said Maric.
Prosecutor Sanja Hodzic said that she had not been previously informed about these threats.
During the hearing Karalic explained that she was told of threats made against her through third parties. Karalic’s testimony against Maric involved the deportation of Bosniaks from the Kiseljak municipality by Croatian forces.
Maric, a former police commander and Deputy Commander of the Security and Information Service of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with the assault and torture of prisoners of war and civilians in Kiseljak 1993.
Sabaheta Hajdarevic, another prosecution witness, told the court that she knew Maric and that she once asked him to drive her to her father’s house. Hajdarevic explained that Maric was stationed at a check-point located in the vicinity of her father’s house.
“When we arrived to my father’s house, I saw that it was burning. A dead man could be seen inside. The big house that my sister lived in and ran a wholesale trade shop from was plundered. I saw women come into the house and loot it. While we were in an old house [nearby], at some point he [Maric] ripped my underwear, trying to find money,” Hajdarevic said, saying that indictee Maric ripped her underwear off and that she left her home later on.
Omer Musinbegovic, a former security officer with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that people who had been deported from the Kiseljak area mentioned Maric frequently in their statements.
Prosecution witness Hasim Musanovic was one of the deported from Kiseljak. According to Musanovic, Maric and another Kiseljak municipal servant were present when his possessions were inventoried and house given away “voluntarily” to the authorities.
The fourth prosecution witness, Esad Rizvanovic, said that his family was deported from Gromiljak, near Kiseljak. Rizvanovic said that he knew Maric and that he asked him to help him “evacuate female family members” from Kiseljak. Rizvanovic claims that Maric did not help him, and that Maric was present during the deportation of his family from Gromiljak.
The trial is scheduled to continue on February 27.
