Witnesses Describe Capture and Murder of Squad Commander Icanovic Trial

Icanovic has been charged with killing two prisoners of war in the Latica Glavica area in December 1994 and beating other captives with a rifle butt. The two prisoners of war were allegedly members of the National Defense of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region. At the time Icanovic was the commander of the 505th Brigade of the Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Army.

Ale Kekic, a former member of the National Defense of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region, told the cantonal court in Bihac that he was captured, along with his comrades, in the Latica Glavica region in the municipality of Velika Kladusa.

Kekic said an unidentified assailant killed their commander, Huso Kujundzic, when they were captured.

“As far as I can remember the Bosnian Army soldier who shot him was a blonde, short man with wide shoulders and very blue eyes,” Kekic said.

Kekic said he couldn’t recognize the assailant in photographs shown to him by the prosecution during the investigation or at today’s hearing.

Samir Ordagic was also taken captive on the same occasion. He said he and the other prisoners were lined up in two rows.

“When we put our weapons away, a Bosnian Army soldier asked us who our commander was. Huso [Kujundzic] said he was and stepped forward. He asked him three times where he had gotten his uniform from and he responded. After that he shot him and he fell down in the snow,” Ordagic said.

Ordagic said he saw Icanovic with Bosnian Army soldiers on that day.

The defense objected to the Ordagic’s testimony in its entirety.

Senada Kovacevic, the wife of Fikret Kovacevic, and Hanca Okanovic, Huso Kujundzic’s sister, were examined at this hearing.

Kovacevic said she was pregnant at the time of her husband’s death. She said her husband wrote her letters from the battlefield, and he’d told her that they were cold and the situation was becoming difficult.

“I wasn’t able to go to the morgue to identify him because I was pregnant, but I identified my husband on the basis of video recordings,” Kovacevic said.

Okanovic told the court she found out about the death of her brother from Ale Kekic.

“He told me a member of the Fifth Corps, whose nickname was Hans, had killed him,” Okanovic said.

The trial will continue on June 24.