Witness at Blagoje Vlacic Trial Reports Threats

Milorad Krkeljas, the chairman of the trial chamber of the district court in Eastern Sarajevo, said the prosecution filed a custody order motion against Vlacic, on the grounds of having influenced witnesses.

Dejan Bogdanovic, Vlacic’s defense attorney, said he hadn’t received the custody order motion. He did however confirm that prosecutor Tarik Crnkic told him the witness had reported being threatened.

“The situation is such that an urgent decision on this proposal needs to be rendered,” Crnkic said. He said it was clear that the threats the witness received were related to the trial, and that whoever was issuing the threats was aware of the scheduling of the hearings.

Vlacic, a former member of military police of the Bricanska Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been charged with murder and the inhumane treatment of detainees imprisoned in the Lovac building in Sekovici in 1993.

According to the indictments, Vlacic took three detained civilians out of their cells and beat them to death. The indictment alleges that he then ordered another detainee to carry their bodies into a cell, and ordered him to not to say anything about their deaths.

The chamber will render a decision about the prosecution’s custody order motion for Vlacic by tomorrow, May 26.

The date of the next hearing will be set at a later stage.