Witness at Vrucinic Trial Describes Prisoner Abuse in Sanski Most
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The indictment alleges that Vrucinic, the former public safety station chief and member of the crisis committee of Sanski Most, participated in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at persecuting the non-Serb population from April to December 1992.
Vrucinic has been charged with the persecution of the Bosniak and Croat civilian population, which included acts of murder, forcible resettlement, unlawful detention and enforced disappearances committed in Sanski Most and Prijedor.
On the second day of his testimony, witness Fikret Muhic said he was the director of the Famos company and the president of the municipal trade union council in Sanski Most, but was prohibited from working in May 1992.
According to the Muhic’s testimony, on June 11, 1992, Serb soldiers came to Irfan Dzaferagic’s house and took him to the Krings factory. Afterwards Muhic was transferred to the sports hall.
“During around the second half of June we heard a fuss in the corridor. Prisoners from Sanica had just arrived. They beat them to exhaustion…We cleaned the blood off the floor,” Muhic said.
Muhic said he was taken out of the sports hall to his street in order to identify dead bodies.
“I saw nine dead people. God forbid, those scenes were really horrible,” Muhic said, adding that he saw a pregnant woman among the dead.
Muhic said soldiers escorted him while he identified bodies.
In response to questions by the defense during cross-examination, Muhic said he knew Mirko Vrucinic. He said Vrucinic was a member of the crisis committee and the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) “during the most difficult times.”
Muhic said he was detained in the sports hall for 21 days before being released, but was arrested again on July 5, 1992. He was taken to the Krings factory again. Afterwards he and others were loaded onto Agrokomerc factory trucks and transported to Trnopolje.
“When we arrived to Trnopolje, we got off the trucks. We were put into wagons at the railway station,” Muhic said. Muhic said a married couple was killed at that location.
Muhic said he and other detainees were transported from Trnopolje to Doboj and were then forced to walk over reinforced steel mesh across the Spreca river. He and others were ordered to drop all their belongings into the river.
Muhic said a woman with a child was unable to walk over the mesh, so a soldier threw her child into the river. Afterwards, the mother jumped into the river as well.
Muhic said that after having crossed the river he saw landmines in the grass. He said he and other captives walked through a tunnel until they arrived to territory controlled by the Bosnian Army.
The trial will continue on July 1.
