State Prosecution Witness Describes Her Rape at Ilija Juric Trial

The witness, Milica Djekic, said she was detained in a house with approximately twenty other people before her rape. On the night of June 4 or 5, 1992, members of the Croatian Defense Council appeared at the house and demanded that the door be opened, she said.

“They cursed our Chetnik mothers and took us outside, while the children stayed inside,” Djekic said. She said she recognized Ilija Juric and Marijan Brnjic among the soldiers.

According to Djekic, Juric and Brnjic led her to a car and drove her to Posavska Mahala in Odzak. She said three other women were with her.

“They took me into a room. Ilija Juric entered and ordered me to take my clothes off. I begged him not to touch me. He hit me on the face with his fist and knocked me down…I had to undress. He pushed me down on my back…He did all sorts of things…He raped me and then turned me around and raped me in my anus. He raped me in my mouth,” Djekic said.

Djekic said Pavo Glavas then raped her in the same way,

“I was covered in blood all over my body. They destroyed me. I felt defeated, humiliated, perverse,” she said.

The prosecution asked Djekic how she knew Juric. Djekic said he used to visit their husband in their home, and said he was also her sister’s neighbour.

Djekic said after her rape she returned home through the woods. She said she went to the military police, but she didn’t say who’d raped her, because she was afraid.

“They didn’t want to examine me at the hospital in Odzak, because I’m a Serb,” she said.

Borislav Pisarevic, Ilija Juric’s defense attorney, expressed regret for what happened to Djekic, but said his client wasn’t the perpetrator.

Pisarevic asked Djekic whether the other people who entered the room were wearing phantom caps. Djekic said she didn’t see anyone matching that description. She said the soldiers she saw wore camouflage uniforms featuring the Croatian flag and emblems of the Croatian Defense Council.

Pisarevic presented a report prepared by the state prosecution on Djekic’s story on March 28, 2014. He said that in her 2014 statement, Djekic hadn’t mentioned that Juric was in the car that drove her to Posavska Mahala and didn’t say that she’d been raped by him specifically. Djekic said she couldn’t remember what she’d said.

The indictment alleges that Juric, a former member of the 102nd Brigade of the Croatian Defense Council, raped and sexually abused a Serb woman in a house in the village in Posavska Mahala in the municipality of Odzak on the night of June 4 or 5, 1992.

The state prosecution has also charged Juric with intercepting and mistreating two Serb women who were going to a school building in Odzak with their children in July 1992. Their husbands were detained in the school. Juric was allegedly accompanied by other soldiers on that occasion.

The next hearing will be held on June 22.