Witnesses Describe Murder and Attack of Civilians in Trnovo

Bunoza, Godinjak and Saric have been charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at killing and detaining Serb civilians in villages in the Trnovo area.

The indictment alleges that Bunoza was the commander of Croatian Defense Forces units in the area, Godinjak was the chief of police in Trnovo and Saric was the commander of the Territorial Defense in Trnovo.

State prosecution witness Nada Karamehmedovic testified at today’s hearing. Karamehmedovic said her parents, Dusko and Zorka Cvijetic, left their home in the hamlet of Mosevici in the village of Presjenica and went to Sarajevo in April 1992. She said she had been able to reach them by phone until the beginning of May 1992, when telephone lines were cut.

“My dad just told me everybody here was insane,” Karamehmedovic said.

She said she found out that her parents had been killed in the summer of 1992.

“If I were to find the murderer, I would like to ask him what harm my ill parents had caused him,” Karamehmedovic said.

She said four other members of the Cvijetic family were also killed.

Testifying at today’s hearing, Obren Cvijetic described murders that were committed during the attack on Mosevici.

“I heard a truck had arrived. There was shooting. I evacuated my wife in the woods and ran away,” he said. He said he found out that members of his family had been killed upon his return.

State prosecution witness Milos Vitkovic said he was stationed at a military position in Sestanovic, from which he could see that villages in the Trnovo area were burning, including his own. He said that while he was stationed in military positions he heard rumours about what was happening in those villages.

“The rumours said that the Cvijetics had been killed,” Vitkovic said.

State prosecution witness Joka Prorok described the murder of Serb civilians in the village of Tosici, where her family lived. She said she lived in Vogosca, near Sarajevo, when killings took place in the village.

“I found that out my mother was alive on September 13, 1992. The first good news she conveyed to me was the fact that Edo [Edhem] Godinjak had saved her,” she said.

Prorok said her mother joined other residents of Tosici who wanted to leave the Trnovo area, but gave up and and decided to hide by a brook with another woman.

“The two of them agreed they would not leave the brook, because they didn’t want to live without water, even if they risked being killed or harmed in some other way,” Prorok said, conveying her mother’s words.

She said Godinjak and two other soldiers found her mother and the other woman by the brook. She said they took them to a kindergarten and they were exchanged a day later. The defense asked her how her mother knew the man who helped her was Godinjak. Prorok said other people had told her his name after she had described him.

“I think they told her in the kindergarten in Trnovo, but also in Kalinovik,” Prorok said.

Prorok said she found out about what had happened in Tosici from stories told by other people. She said they told her that some of the local residents had been killed, hung from trees and that one person had been decapitated.

The trial will continue on December 1.