Witness at Puljic Trial Describes Abduction of Civilians

A protected witness testifying at the Mile Puljic trial said she’d heard from another witness in the trial that her husband and brother-in-law had been abducted.

Mile Puljic, the former commander of the Second Battalion of the Second Croatian Defense Council Brigade, has been charged with allowing his subordinates to take detainees from the Heliodrom camp in Mostar to other locations, in order to perform forced labour and to use them as human shields.

Puljic has also been accused of participating in enforced disappearances and beatings.

The prosecution alleges that members of the Second Battalion took two persons in an unknown direction in May 1993. Their remains were exhumed in 2007 and 2008.

A protected state prosecution witness known as S3 said that after the conflict began in Mostar in 1993, she resided in a residential building where a protected witness known as S1 and her family lived.

“One night I heard some noise. I exited my apartment, and I saw a person who said ‘Go back inside.’ On the following day I heard that S1’s husband and brother-in-law had been taken away. She told me so,” S3 said.

S3 said she saw the person in her building for only a brief moment. She described him as wearing “a shirt with many colours, like the kind soldiers wear.”

S3 said S1 told her that two members of the Croatian Defense Council had taken her husband and brother-in-law away, and that overall she didn’t talk a lot about their abduction.

“S1 went to look for her husband. She asked me to accompany her, so I did. Not always, but sometimes, just to make it easier for her,” S3 said.

“Those people couldn’t stay, unless they were protected by their Croat friends. There was fear and all sorts of things. Soldiers weren’t the only people who broke into our apartment. A civilian once came to my apartment to see who lived there,” S3 said. She said she left the town shortly after the conflict began.

At the beginning of the hearing, the trial chamber said the witness had recently received medical assistance because of her health problems. The hearing continued after a break.

S1 had testified at the trial on April 8. She had said that her husband and brother-in-law were taken away by two soldiers, following the break out of conflict between the Bosnian Army and the Croatian Defense Council.

S1 had said she didn’t know a lot about the arrests of Bosniaks that were taking place in Mostar at the time, but said she’d heard that they were being taken to the Heliodrom camp.

The second state prosecution witness to appear in court was sent back in order to determine whether he had been granted protective measures during his testimony at the Hague. Prosecutor Remzija Smailagic said the witness told her he had not been given such measures. The trial chamber asked the witness the same question during a closed part of the hearing.

“The witness is not sure whether he was granted protective measures, so we shall not examine him today. The prosecutor has been ordered to confirm this,” trial chamber chairman Darko Samardzic said.

The trial will continue on May 20.