Witness Describes Finding Mother’s Remains in Karacici

The witness, Fikret Pinjo, testified at the trial of Radomir Markovic, Mile Kusic, Dragan Bozovic, Sasa Perkovic, Radomir Gluhovic, Pero Radovic, Ilija and Milos Vukasinovic. The defendants are charged with looting and searching homes in the villages of Karacici, Vragolovi and Golubovici in September 1992. According to the charges, they found about 20 Bosniak civilians in a garage. They allegedly beat them with rifle butts and then shot them. The shots, according to the indictment, caused a fire which burned down the garage.

Markovic is a former commander of the Socici unit of the Rogatica brigade of the Bosnian Serb army, while the other defendants are members of that unit.

Fikret Pinjo said a Serb man had told him after the war that his mother’s bones were in Karacici, where she lived before the war.

Pinjo said he was told that four persons, among them his mother, were taken to a barn not far from his family home and killed, while his home was torched.

“I came back to Karacicic. We cleaned [the area] and found a human bone. We told the police in Gorazde and they said that it was a possible crime scene. Then they did the exhumation,” Pinjo said.

He said his mother’s remains were identified through DNA testing, and family members had also identified her belongings.

“The man who helped me only told me where her remains were, but never mentioned who killed her,” Pinjo said. He said for the past eight years his only aim has been to find his mother’s bones.

Pinjo refused to reveal the identity of the man who told him about the location of his mother’s remains. He said the man had requested that keep his identity secret. Perkovic’s defense proposed that Pinjo disclose the name in a closed session, but the trial chamber rejected this request.

The trial continues on April 28.