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.
At today’s hearing, two protected state prosecution witnesses said that they were arrested on June 30, 1993 and July 1, 1993. They said they were eventually taken to the Heliodrom detention camp. They said that during their detention they were taken out of the camp several times to perform forced labour.
A protected state prosecution witness known as S-11 said Santiceva Street was a particularly bad work site, because there was shooting there. He said he pulled three wounded people off the street on August 13, 1993.
“We were carrying the wounded to the old people’s home. I was carrying a boy, a person who was wheezing and someone else…In the evening, something burned me, too,” S-11 said. He said that after he received medical treatment he was no longer forced to work.
Protected state prosecution witness and former prisoner S-10 said prisoners were ordered to build a battlement of sandbags on Santiceva Street.
“One bloke was hit in front of me and he fell. We got him out, and when I came back, I sat down with my colleagues. Something exploded, and I was no longer in the place where I was sitting,” S-10 said.
S-10 said he spent three weeks in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained from the detonation. He was then returned to detention camp, but was no longer forced to work.
State prosecution witness and former Heliodrom prisoner Ahmo Idriz said he was forced to work every day. He also confirmed that many prisoners were wounded and killed on Santiceva Street on August 13, 1993.
Idriz said that he was also wounded and that he still has shrapnel from a grenade in his eyebrow. After he recovered, he was forced to work again.
All three witnesses said they didn’t know which military zone of responsibility Santiceva Street belonged to. Idriz said he saw members of certain anti-terrorism groups on Santiceva Street.
“I know that there were two smaller anti-terrorism groups, which were under the command of some battalion, I don’t know which one…The Croatian Defence Council has identical camouflage uniforms, and anti-terrorism groups had black uniforms and some t-shirts, with something like the letter ‘U’ on them. Some of them asked us to address them as ‘Sir Ustasha,’” Idriz said.
The trial will continue on October 21.
