Witnesses Describe the Beating and Murder of their Family at Medosevici Trial
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Milosav, Marijan and Slavko Jovanovic have been charged with murdering five Bosniak civilians in the village of Medosevici in July 1992. According to the charges, two of the civilians were killed with firearms, while one died from a blow to the chest chest. The defendants then killed the children, whom they had previously locked inside the house. Then they allegedly burned the house down.
The three defendants and Stevo Jovanovic are also charged with the murder of one person in the village of Buckovici on June 4, 1992. According to the charges, all of them were members of the Third Podrinjska Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army.
State prosecution witness Safeta Bavcic said she sent her two children to Medosevici at the beginning of the war. She said her parents, sister, and brother lived there. Afterwards, her children, as well as her parents and sister were killed in an attack by Bosnian Serb soldiers. Bavcic said her brother Mevludin managed to run away, and told her what had happened.
“He said he heard that they killed our parents…he told me they were in a barn, when those men came and captured them. They took them to an arable plot of land and beat them. They beat our father first,” Bavcic said.
The state prosecution asked Bavcic what happened to her children. Bavcic said she found out from a neighbour later on that her children had been killed.
“When they took the others to the field, they locked the children inside the house. They killed them and set them on fire,” she said. Bavcic said the same neighbour told her where the bodies of her parents and sister had been buried.
Bavcic said her brother Mevludin had told her that Slavko and Marijan Jovanovic had beaten them that day.
“Slavko and Marijan, they were our closest neighbours. I don’t know the names of the younger ones,” Bavcic said. She said she knew that their last name was Jovanovic.
Safeta Bavcic’s’ husband, Rudo Bavcic, confirmed that he hadn’t seen their children since their departure to Medosevici.
“Mevludin told us that they killed our mother, sister, father. Some members of the Jovanovic family killed them,“ he said. He said Mevludin Bavcic had heard from a Serb that his children were killed and set on fire inside the house.
Bavcic told the court that the bodies of his father-in-law, mother-in-law and sister-in-law were found, but the children’s bodies have never been found.
Three new prosecution witnesses will testify on April 17.
