Wartime Bosnian Army Soldier Convicted of Multiple Rape

Bihac Cantonal Court. Photo: BIRN

The Cantonal Court in the city of Bihac on Tuesday sentenced Senad Salkic to 12 years in prison for war crimes against the civilian population in the Velika Kladusa area in 1994 and 1995.

The first-instance verdict found Salkic, a soldier with the 505th Brigade of the Bosnian Army’s Fifth Corps, guilty of raping three women and inhumanely mistreating a civilian.

The crimes were committed during the conflict between the Bosnian Army and the separatist Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia wartime statelet, the court found.

The verdict said that Salkic came to the house of a fighter from the National Defence force of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia in October 1995, and ordered his wife to go with him to give a statement in the town of Buzim.

After driving her away, he then hit her and forced her to have sex with him at two separate locations, causing injuries and leaving her with bruising all over her body.

Also in October 1995, Salkic seized another woman whose husband was a fighter from the National Defence force of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia and took her into an abandoned building where he raped her.

Salkic in the autumn of 1995 went to the house of a third woman, who was a supporter of the National Defence force of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, and forced her to go with him to a primary school in Buzim, where he raped and insulted her.

After the assault, he ordered another, unknown soldier, to also rape the woman. Salkic then raped her again on the two days that followed, the verdict said.

The verdict further found that Salkic, together with other, unknown soldiers, went to the village of Stabandza in the Velika Kladusa municipality on October 17, 1994 and asked for Mujo Muratovic, a member of the National Defence force of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia.

After Muratovic came out with his hands up, Salkic and the others beat him and, when he fainted, poured water on him and continued kicking and hitting him with their fists and batons before taking him away to an unknown location.

Salkic went to another woman’s house, swore at her and hit her with a baton, and then to a house occupied by two pregnant women, who he also hit wityh a baton.

The verdict said that Salkic then went back to Mujo Muratovic’s house and hit his wife, saying: “Remember me well – I am Senad Salkic from Cava. You see Mujo now but you will never see him again.”

The verdict can be appealed.