This post is also available in: Bosnian
Belgrade Higher Court. Photo: BIRN
Witness Zoran Kenjalo told Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday that he falsely claimed that defendants Milenko Karlica and Zeljko Novakovic were involved in killing 27 Bosniaks from villages in Bosnia’s north-western Bosanski Novi area during the war in June 1992.
Kenjalo is also a former Bosnian Serb soldier and has already been convicted of involvement in the Bosanski Novi killings after admitting guilt as part of a plea bargain.
“In this court, I want to apologise to Milenko Karlica, nothing I said about him [in 2016 statement] is true,” Kenjalo told the court.
He also said that “I had to mention someone” while he was being questioned by the prosecutor in connection with the crime, so he had named defendant Novakovic because he knew him before the war.
According to the indictment, Bosnian Serb troops seized Bosniak civilians from the hamlets of Maslovare, Alici and Ekici in the Bosanski Novi area on June 22, 1992 and took them to the nearby Orthodox cemetery, where they beat the men in front of the women and children.
The Bosniak men were then taken to a Muslim cemetery, where they were ordered to dig a communal grave. The Serb soldiers then shot and killed 24 of them. Another three Bosniaks were shot along the way.
In 1996, Bosnian Serb forces dug up most of the bodies buried at the Muslim cemetery, took them to the confluence of the Japra and Sana rivers and threw them into the water.
In 1998, the bodies of six people were found at the primary grave in the Muslim cemetery. In 2001, human remains identified as two more victims of the crime were found at the mouth of the Japra river and the remains of one more was found downstream in the settlement of Jablanica.
The bodies of the other people thrown into the water have never been found.
According to the indictment, Milenko Karlica ordered the crime and, together with Zeljko Novakovic and over 20 other people, participated in it.
Karlica and Novakovic pleaded not guilty at the start of the trial in September.
Kenjalo admitted guilt in 2016 as part of a plea bargain and was sentenced to five years in prison. Two other ex-soldiers, Stojan Kenjalo and Dragan Balaban, also admitted they were guilty and were jailed for seven years each.
During his testimony on Tuesday, Kenjalo explained that he was “under stress and in fear” while he was being questioned at the Bosnian state prosecution, so when he was asked about defendant Karlica, he just confirmed Balaban’s claim that Karlica was guilty.
Kenjalo told the court that he was present while the crime was happening, but that Karlica and Novakovic were escorting a convoy of women and children that had left the area and were not there when the Bosniaks were killed.
Kenjalo also said that he did not know who killed the Bosniaks. “I did not see, it was night,” he said.
Twelve people are currently on trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the same crime.
The defendants in the Sarajevo trial are Ljuban Babic, Ranko Balaban, Rajko Karlica, Milenko Brcin, Mirko Odzic, Milenko Babic, Ratko Goronja, Nikola Reljic, Dragan and Ranko Baltic, Miroslav Kapetanovic and Ranko Grab.
