Witnesses Describe Whereabouts of Suspect in Mount Borje Executions

The state prosecution has charged Dragan Marjanovic, Sasa Gavranovic, Vitomir Devic, Zoran Sljuk, Dragomir Kezunovic and Dario Slavuljica with participating in an attack against the Bosniak and Croat population and detaining them at the Teslic police station, on Territorial Defense premises and in a military prison from June 1992 to June 30, 1993.

The defendants have been accused of taking 28 detained civilians from a Teslic police station and the nearby Pribinic prison to Mount Borje on the night of June 17 and 18, 1992. There, the defendants allegedly killed them.

According to the indictment, at the time Marjanovic was the commander of the First Squad of the military police of the Teslicka Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army. The other defendants were members of that squad and also members of the Mice paramilitary formation.

Branislav Jelic, a former member of a military police company in Teslic, said defendant Dragan Marjanovic ordered him to assist him with a task on Mount Borje. He said two members of their company went with them.

When asked where they were going, he said Marjanovic told him they would find out later. When they arrived to Mount Borje, Jelic said he saw a grave and other people there.

“I realized we would fill a grave with dirt,” Jelic said. He said he and others filled the grave with dirt until the morning.

Jelic said Marjanovic looked depressed.
Jelic said that prior to the executions on Mount Borje, defendant Ranko Sljuka and other members of the Mice paramilitary formation had arrived to Teslic. He said they took over the military police company. He said the Mice paramilitaries had no association with the military police.

State prosecution witness and former Bosnian Serb fighter Dragan Babic also testified at today’s hearing. He told the court that after defendant Ranko Sljuka became the head of the military police, he became the commander of the military prison in Pribinic.

Babic said he remembered a night when a truck arrived in front of the Pribinic prison and was loaded with prisoners.

Babic said he couldn’t remember who escorted the truck when it departed, but confirmed that Marjanovic was following in a car. He also named a few other individuals, not charged in the case. He confirmed that the statement he gave during the investigation phase of the case was correct.

Babic said that on the following day Marjanovic told him a group of people had been executed, and that he had stayed at the execution site all night until the bodies were buried. When asked what Marjanovic looked like, Babic said he looked absent-minded, tired and wet from the rain.

He said Marjanovic was a good leader. Responding to questions by one of the defendants, Babic said he didn’t remember if Devic was in detention during the night of the Mount Borje murders.

“He does know, but he keeps quiet,” said Ramiz Aljic, Devic’s defense attorney.

The trial will continue on September 17.