Bosnian Serb Troops ‘Rounded Up Bosanski Novi Villagers’

Prosecution witness Fikreta Ekic told the state court in Sarajevo on Wednesday that Serb troops rounded up all the men in her village in June 1992, and took the women and children away.

Ekic said that it was the last time she ever saw her husband.

She testified that she was in the village of Ekici with her husband and two sons on June 22, 1992, when she heard that they might be attacked by Serbs who were attending a funeral in another village.

Later on, she saw two or three armed Serb men in an orchard, who told her and her family to walk along in front of them.
According to her testimony, they walked from one house to another in the villages of Ekici and Alici, telling local people to come out.

She said that while they were walking, the armed Serbs kept telling them: “Balijas [a derogatory term for Muslims], where are your ‘Green Berets’ [Bosnian Army soldiers]?”

The witness said that between 25 and 30 soldiers were already in front of one house.

She said she heard a gunshot at some stage, and saw a man called Fadil Ekic fall down. After that they were directed towards the Serb cemetery.

“They told the male residents to stand there, while were stayed in a group. They began hitting them, ordering them to sing Chetnik songs… It was after midnight. We crouched down in fear, waiting to see what would happen next,” Ekic recalled.

She said that the women and children, between 50 and 60 of them, were transported on tractor trailers to the village of Urije, while 27 men, including her husband Muharem Ekic, stayed behind.

She said that her sister-in-law then went to the village, where she saw a freshly-dug grave. She was also told not to have any hope of finding any survivors.

Ljuban Babic, Ranko Balaban, Rajko Karlica, Milenko Brcin, Mirko Odzic, Milenko Babic, Ostoja Balaban, Ratko Goronja, Nikola Reljic, brothers Dragan and Ranko Baltic, Miroslav Kapetanovic and Ranko Grab are on trial for persecution, murders and other crimes committed in Bosanski Novi.

The former members of the Bosnian Serb Army, police force and paramilitary groups have been charged with killing 24 people in the hamlets of Alici and Ekici on June 22, 1992.

Witness Ekic said that she then joined a convoy that transported her to Croatia. In March 1993, she left the country for Germany, where she was accommodated with other refugees from Bosnia. She said that many people spoke to her about the killings in Ekici and Alici.

“They just said our men had been killed… At some point I heard that my older son killed himself, that he said he could no longer listen to what had happened to his father,” the witness said, crying.

The remains of some of the victims were found in a grave in Alici, but her husband’s body was not among them.

She returned to the village of Blagaj, near Bosanski Novi, but she said that nobody lives in Ekici or Alici anymore.