Witness Describes Arrest and Abuse of Husband at Popovic Trial

Jovan Popovic has been charged with detaining civilians in Rodica Brdo in the Visegrad area in mid-June 1992 and taking them to a police station. Popovic allegedly acted in collaboration with a group of soldiers led by Milan Lukic, a Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal.

State prosecution witness Fatma Zukic said her husband Fadil was taken away by two unknown men on June 17, 1992. She said she didn’t see Popovic, who she knows well, at the time of his detainment.

She said that after her husband’s arrest, she saw Popovic standing on a road near houses in Rodica Brdo. She said she also didn’t see who abducted Resad Mucovski on the same day.

She said her husband was taken to the police station in Visegrad, where she visited him twice.

“I was there and saw him, he was all beaten up,” Zukic said. She said when she visited her husband for the third time, he wasn’t at the police station.

She said his body was found in 2001.

Zukic said Popovic came to her house looking for her father-in- law. She couldn’t specify whether this happened on the same day of her husband’s arrest or a few days later.

She said Popovic entered the house and looking for her father-in-law, who was hidden behind the door. She said Popovic was unable to find him and left.

A new state prosecution witness will be examined on October 14.