This post is also available in: Bosnian
“Honourable Chamber, I am asking you, as the wife of a missing person, as the mother of fatherless children, to ask Mr. Nikola Maric to tell us where his bones are. I am not saying, God forbid, that he did it, but he took them away,” Hrinic said.
Testifying for the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hrinic said her husband was detained in the school center in Prozor on August 2, 1993, while she was deported from the town together with her children and other Bosniaks. She said she found out that her husband Hasko was on a list of prisoners, who were visited by a doctor in the secondary school center.
“I found out that Nikola Maric came in the early evening and called the names of people, who had visited a doctor. They were taken away by some semi-cargo vehicle, a small TAM truck, Zastava factory. I received the first pieces of information from Remzo Colak and Esad Beganovic,” the witness said, adding she had still not found her husband.
She told the court she met defendant Maric in 2008.
“I had always planned to address him as a man when I met him and ask him about my husband. I would be an idiot if I told you that he was rude. He said – I know what you would like to ask me. I have got information. We shall speak once I have confirmed it,” Hrinic said.
Defendant Maric said he had not contacted the witness.
Nikola Maric, former member of the Croatian Defense Council, HVO, is charged under 25 counts with having committed persecution by participating in murders, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993. He is also charged with the disappearance of six persons from the secondary school center in Prozor.
Witness Osman Sabic told the court he was 15 when he was forced to leave Druzinovici village in Prozor municipality with a part of his family. He said that Nikola Maric, known as Nidzo, gave them the order to leave while standing in front of his aunt’s house.
Sabic pointed out that Nikola Maric separated his father from other passengers on a truck and asked him to give him money, grabbing him by his chest. He said that the three Kmetas brothers were taken off the truck near the fire brigade station in Prozor, but he did not see the defendant at that location.
Testifying at this hearing, a military court expert Dragomir Keserovic said he determined on the basis of evidence that defendant Maric was a member of the HVO Kinder Squad, military police of the Rama Brigade, but he was not able to confirm what his function was.
Keserovic determined that Maric was in charge in the field, but he was not able to do anything on his own, but he was a part of a system that functioned in a certain area with the aim of removing one ethnic group and fulfill the plan for creation of so-called state of Herceg-Bosna.
The trial will continue on July 2.
