Defense Witness Describes Drago Koncar as “Extremely Positive”

The state prosecution has charged Mitar Vlasenko, Rade Vlasenko and Drago Koncar with participating in the persecution of the non-Serb civilian population in the Prijedor area from May 24, 1992 to August 1992. The defendants allegedly committed acts of murder and enforced disappearances as a part of the persecution.

Witness Snjezana Kitonic said she remembered there being tension and fear among people in Jaruge and the surrounding villages in May 1992.

“Considering the fact that I’m a Catholic, Dragan [Drago] Koncar used to visit us in order to see if we were OK and if we needed any sort of help,” Kitonic said. She said she heard the defendant also helped another Catholic family in the area.

She said she noticed armed Bosniaks at checkpoints in the hamlet of Mujkanovici and in Kozarusa.

Kitonic said she didn’t see the defendant the day the armed conflict began on May 24, 1992. She said she saw Koncar two or three days later, when he passed by her house heading towards the center of Jaruge. She said he was walking with four other men, who she assumed were Bosniaks. She said she knew one of them.

“Dragan greeted us. He said hello,” Kitonic said.

Kitonic said she wasn’t under the impression that Koncar was escorting any of them. She said he was uniformed but not carrying a gun. She said the same group returned from the center 30 to 45 minutes later.

The defense asked Kitonic if she had heard that the defendant had committed any crimes. She said she hadn’t, and that she had decided to testify because of her extremely positive opinion of the defendant.

During cross-examination, Kitonic said she didn’t see the checkpoint in Jaruge when she was going to work. She said she saw it a day or two before actions undertaken by an armed group of people wearing emblems of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA).

Also testifying at today’s hearing, Milos Koncar said “someone” from Patrije arrived in the area on May 28, 1992, and “informed us a group of Muslims wanted to surrender.” He said he went “up there,” but was shot in the stomach. He said Rade Vlasenko was wounded on that occasion as well.

He said he saw the body of Hasan Talic, who was killed by a grenade earlier that day. He said he saw the body while giving the Interventions Squad directions on how to get to Cirkini.

Koncar said Blagoje Baltic, Bosko Bucalo and Zdravko Lukic were killed the day when he was discharged from hospital at the beginning of June 1992. He said Lukic and Baltic had took him into a house. He said Rade Vlasenko arrived to the same house on a motorbike.

The trial will continue on February 23.