Witness Describes Prisoner Abuse in Potoci by Bosnian Army Soldiers

“Enes Curic, Miralem Bubalo and Sultan came in front of the house. They were looking for weapons…they took us to some houses in Meke. My child was wounded in there,” Zorica Zovko said.

She said they were kept in a basement for seven or eight days prior going to Mostar, where they were detained in an elementary school building. She said they were returned to Potoci on July 21, 1993.

“Military policemen came and took us to a school building in Potoci. We stayed in the gym…The conditions were horrible. There were no windows, there was a hole on the roof from a grenade. We slept on the floor,” Zovko said.

She said Enes Curic was the commander of the detention camp and that female detainees were taken away.

“I know that women were taken away…we didn’t see where they took them or who did it. They looked miserable,” Zovko said. She said the female detainees didn’t talk about what happened to them.

“Only those women know the secret,” she said.

Prosecutor Stanko Blagic asked Zovko whether male detainees were taken to other locations in order to perform forced labour. Zovko said men, women and children were taken away.

“My son went. He carried weapons to Cucurak…Three people got killed on that day. They forced my son to drag their bodies to the nearest houses,” Zovko said.

She said Enes Curic called out the names of detainees who would perform forced labour.

According to Zovko, she was taken to certain houses in order to clean and was also ordered to go th e Neretva river with other women in order to evacuate a wounded man.

“Children were used as human shields. If we tried to run away, they would kill our children,” she said.

Defense attorney Kenan Ademovic asked Zovko how she knew that Curic was the commander of the detention camp. She said he was at the detention camp the entire time and was in charge. She said he had to have known what was happening.

Enes Curic, Ibrahim Demirovic, Samir Kreso, Habib Copelj and Mehmed Kaminic have been charged with participating in the detention of Croat civilians, who were subjected to severe physical and mental mistreatment from June to December 1993.

According to the charges, Curic was a member of the 49th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army and the manager of a detention facility 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 military medical unit of the Mountain Brigade that was active in the Bijelo Polje area, while Copelj and Kaminic were members of the Bosnian Army.

Demirovic is also charged with an incident of rape which occurred Potoci.

The trial will continue on May 20.