Radic et al: Staying Alive

A former member of Bijelo polje battalion with the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), who has testified as a protected prosecution witnesses under the pseudonym of AH, has testified at the Court of BiH.

AH remembered the Bosniaks held in Vojno detention camp, and said that indictee Marko Radic was commander of Bijelo polje battalion.

“My relationship with Radic has been good since the war, and I would not mind having a coffee with him even today,” said AH.

“I remember that, on June 30, 1993, Dario Susac and Emir Brekalo captured an BiH Army soldier. Other HVO soldiers told me, later on, that the two of them had slaughtered the poor man,” said A., who testified via video link from a separate room within the Court of BiH building, while his face was blurred.

The Prosecution of BiH charges Damir Brekalo, whose name used to be Emir, Radic, Dragan Sunjic and Mirko Vracevic with murder, rape and beatings, and of forcing Bosniaks held in Vojno detention camp to perform hard labour.

According to the available data, Susac is associated with crimes committed against Bosniaks in Herzegovina region.

The witness said he saw that Bosniaks were detained in different houses in Vojno and that Mario Mihalj was commander of the detention camp, while Sunjic was his deputy.

The indictment against the four men mentioned Mihalj, who died before they were arrested.

“I saw the Bosniaks at the time when the pomegranates were still not ripe. I am mentioning this because I remember bringing an unripe pomegranate to a female detainee. At the time the detainees looked bad and too skinny,” explained AH.

The second prosecution witness, Aziz Dautbegovic, claims to have been held in Vojno detention camp from November 1993 to January 1994. He said that, “almost every day” he saw Sunjic, who “liked to hit” the detainees “with a gun butt”.

The witness told the court that, in January 1994, indictee Sunjic shot detainee Enes Nurko in front of the house in Vojno where the Bijelo polje battalion staffs was situated.

“Sunjic entered the house and, after speaking to somebody over the phone, he took a gun and killed Nurko. On that same day, Dzemal Sabitovic was killed, while he was digging trenches. The two men were buried in the same grave,” Dautbegovic recalled.

While he was detained in Vojno, Dautbegovic “once saw guard Mirko Vracevic”, who was “skinny and had one slightly defected eye”.

Dautbegovic claims to have been held, in 1993 and 1994, in Heliodrom, Dretelj and Vojno detention camps, as well as in the secondary school building in Prozor. He pointed out that the days he spent in Vojno were the worst of all, as detainees “never knew whether they would wake up alive”.

The trial is due to continue on January 15, 2008.