Witness Describes Prisoner Abuse by Former Bosnian Army Soldiers

The defendants are Samir Kreso, Enes Curic, Ibrahim Demirovic, Habib Copelj and Mehmed Kaminic. They’ve been charged with detaining Croat civilians at detention facilities in a house in Omerika and a school building in Potoci. The civilians were subjected to brutal physical and mental mistreatment from June to December 1993. According to the state prosecution’s charges, Demirovic also raped a detainee in Potoci.

According to the charges, at the time Curic was a member of the 49th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army and the manager of detention facilities in the school building and other buildings in Potoci. Demirovic was the commander of the 47th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army. Kreso was the chief of the medical military unit of the Mountain Brigade that was active in the Bijelo Polje area. Copelj and Kaminic were members of the Bosnian Army.

Zeljko Zovko said she was captured and detained by the defendants.

“On the night of June 29 or 30, 1993, some unknown soldiers entered our house and asked for money. Since I didn’t have any money, they kept beating me harder and harder…Some soldiers came in the morning on June 30 and took me to a detention camp in Meke,” Zovko said.

Zovko said Kreso was one of the soldiers who captured her.

The detention camp in Meke was located near Potoci in the municipality of Mostar. She said she was there for seven days, and was then taken to the Omerika house.

Enes Curis was the manager of Omerika house. Zovko said she knew he was the manager because he was present all the time.

“People were mistreated at that place…When a grenade fell, some detainees were wounded, but Kreso didn’t want to come and offer help, although he was a medical doctor with the Croatian Defense Council,” Zovko said.

Zovko said Bosnian Army soldiers used to take detainees out of the Omerika house, and that those detainees looked beaten and bruised when they returned.

Zovko said seven or eight days later they were taken to Mostar. They were returned to Potoci and detained in the school building on June 22, 1993.

“The hall was terrible. We slept on a concrete floor…I saw Curic. He came immediately. He was the manager of that place. He brought food. Female detainees cooked our meals. Nobody could enter the detention camp without his permission,” Zovko said.

Zovko also said when Ibrahim Demirovic visited the school, he behaved violently and cursed the detainees’ “Ustashi mothers.”

“He hit two or three women…afterwards he took a girl out. When she came back, she was crying. She covered her head. In the morning she told me that the worst thing had happened – rape,” Zovko explained.

Prosecutor Stanko Blagic presented Zovko with a report on identification on the basis of photographs. Zovko then identified the defendants in the courtroom.

Curic asked Zovko who told her that women detainees had been raped. Zovko said she could not answer that question.

Zovko’s cross-examination will continue on April 14.