State Prosecution Witnesses Describe Details of Murder at Brestovac Trial

Brestovac, a police officer with the Doboj public safety station, has been charged with participating in the murder of civilians Muharem, Muhamed and Ismeta Aldobasic in the village of Miljkovac in Doboj in June 1992.

Witness Lidija Hadzic said her mother Petra, since deceased, told her in 1993 that a man who lived across the street from the Orthodox church in Doboj killed her father, Muharem Aldobasic, as well as her uncle and aunt.

“My mother worked with the dialysis department at the hospital. She told me that the deceased Seksan, who owned a paint and varnish shop, told her the man’s name was Vojo Brestovac or Grabovac,” Hadzic said.

Hadzic said her mother told her that the man forced her father to set their house on fire. She said her mother saw the man before the murder, and said had insulted her for having married a Muslim.

“She told me he pushed her once while she was shopping with my underage son. She said he drove by in 2003 and made a u-turn in front of our house in Miljkovac. I was inside the house at that moment. I only saw the car,” Hadzic said.

Hadzic aid she attended the exhumation of her father, uncle and aunt in 2001.

“My dad was in blue pajamas. Everything was almost intact,” Hadzic said.

Prosecution witness Ilvana Aldobasic said her husband, Muhamed Aldobasic, was killed in 1992. She said her husband drove her and their children to Tesanj at the beginning of May 1992. He said he returned to retrieve something, but didn’t return.

Aldobasic said she heard the names Vojislav Brestovac and Cvjetko Sarcevic from Petra Aldobasic.

“One of them forced Muharem to set the house on fire. I attended the exhumation. Muharem was in blue pajamas. I recognized my husband Muhamed,” Aldobasic said.

Aldobasic said Petra Aldobasic told her she saw Vojislav Brestovac once, when her daughter was attending a graduation ceremony in front of the Doboj municipality building.

“When we returned home, she told me the man who had killed them was standing behind me. She didn’t point him out to me on that occasion,” Aldobasic said.

Vasva Mujkanovic, the daughter of injured party Ismeta Aldobasic, told the court that her late aunt Petra told told her she’d seen the man who’d killed her mother, uncle and brother-in-law at a graduation ceremony in Doboj in 2009.

Slavisa Bojinovic, Petra Aldobasic’s brother, said he was on the frontline on Putnikovo Hill as a member of the Dobojska Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army in June 1992.

“I came home on the following day. My sister told me they forced my deceased brother-in-law to set his house on fire, forced them all to leave the house and killed three of them. She personally never told me their names. Later on I found out that Cvjetko Sarcevic was one of the murderers. It was strange and hard to understand that no policemen who were at the police checkpoint in the vicinity of their house in Miljkovac, came to see what was going on,” Bojinovic said.

The trial will continue on September 11.