Family Members Describe Mostar Killings of Detainees at Puljic Trial

Mile Puljic, the former commander of the Second Battalion of the Second Brigade of the Croatian Defense Council, has been charged with allowing his subordinates to take detainees held in the Heliodrom detention camp to locations where they performed forced labour and were used as human shields.

The state prosecution has accused Puljic of participating in a joint criminal enterprise which lead to enforced disappearances, detention, forced labour and the use of human shields from May 1993 to March 1994.

The indictment alleges that Puljic is responsible for the death of 11 Bosniak prisoners and the injury of 70 more, who were used as human shields, labourers, or were subjected to other types of abuse.

State prosecution witness Meliha Colic said two masked men with rifles took her husband Emir to the Heliodrom detention camp on June 30, 1993. She said he was killed on August 13, 1993. She said her husband was a civilian and that all the Bosniaks who lived in their apartment building were taken away.

“I visited him. They took them to Santiceva Street [in Mostar], where the division line between the Croatian Defense Council and the Bosnian Army was, to work. I visited him on the day when he was killed,” Colic said.

Four more state prosecution witnesses testified about the deaths of family members who were forced to work for the Croatian Defense Council in Mostar. State prosecution witness Sacira Jevic said former Heliodrom prisoners told her that her husband Huso had been killed while working on Santiceva Street.

“I heard he was taken from Heliodrom to Santiceva [Street],” Jevic said. She said she identified her husband’s body in 1994.

State prosecution witness Elvedina Penava said the body of her brother Elvedina Suta was exhumed in 1998.

“He was detained in the Heliodrom detention camp. I heard he was killed on Santiceva [Street]…while being used as human shield,” Penava said. She said she found out about her brother’s death from other former Heliodrom prisoners.

State prosecution witness Nihada Husejnagic said her husband was also killed on Santiceva Street. She said she found about the circumstances of his death from a former colleague of his, who served in the Bosnian Army.

Husejnagic said when her husband was taken away, a man came to her house and told her that he was a prisoner at the Heliodrom detention camp. The man asked Husejnagic to send some clothes to him, which she did.

State prosecution witness Zijada Tuco told the court that her husband Adis Brkovic was detained in Heliodrom in 1993, and was taken away by members of the Second Battalion of the Croatian Defense Council.

Tuco said a man named Goran saw her husband being hit on Santiceva Street, and said she found out about his death on that same day.

The trial will continue on September 9.