Pekez et al: Waiting for Family Members to Die

Zejna Bajramovic, a Prosecution witness at the trial of Pekez et al, claims to have survived the shooting of a group of Bosniaks from Cerkazovici and Ljojici villages in Jajce municipality in September 1992. She accused indictee Mirko (son of Spiro) Pekez with having participated in that crime.

“We arrived in Tisovac in a column,” the witness said. “They brought a piece of white linen and asked us to put on it our gold, money, IDs…whatever we had with us. They started shooting. A moment later I was standing there alone. I heard my husband telling Jovo Jandric:

‘Slaughter me so that I do not suffer any more. You fired four bullets in my chest’,” Bajramovic said. She further claims that she had been taken away, from her neighbour’s house, by Mirko (son of Spiro) Pekez and Jovo Jandric. They captured her, her husband and son.

The Prosecution charges Mirko (son of Spiro) Pekez, Mirko (son of Mile) Pekez and Milorad Savic, as members of the Republika Srpska Army (VRS) and reserve police forces, with involvement in the shooting of 23 civilians from Ljojici and Cerkazovici villages in Jajce municipality on September 10, 1992.

The indictees, Jovo Jandric and other VRS members allegedly gathered the civilians and took them to Tisovac, where they shot them. Four persons survived the shooting.

“I wondered why I stayed alive. I jumped into a hole in order to kill myself, but I was not hurt. The blood of my neighbour Omer’s 20-year-old son was dripping on me. He moaned and called for his mother. They started shooting again. The young man was killed and I was wounded in my back. They left,” Bajramovic recalled, adding that there were “several” soldiers there, but she could not say how many.

“When they left, I waited for my husband to die, and then I stroke my dead son and crawled towards Savica water. When I got there, I washed the blood from my body, as it attracted flies. I washed my face a bit,” the witness said, adding that police then found her and took her to a hospital.

Prosecution witness Pero Savic, a resident of Cerkazovici village, was then examined. He recalled Jovo Jandric saying, during a lunch after the funeral of soldier Rade Savic, that the “Bosniaks should be executed”.

“Mirko (son of Spiro) Pekez, Mirko (son of Mile) Pekez, postman Simo Savic, Milorad Savic and others attended the lunch. In the morning, at about 7am, I heard women saying that Jovo, the two Pekez men and postman Simo had killed those people. Two days later a policeman picked me up, and told me to bring some tools in order to collect and bury those people. We did that and we buried them on my land,” Pero Savic said.

Third witness Nedeljko Jandric, a former commander of the Public Safety Centre in Jajce, said that “the Bosniaks from Cerkazovici and Ljojici went to musters” from mid July to October 1992, as he “did not have sufficient number of policemen”.

“One day the policeman came back after the muster and said that those people were missing, and that something bad had happened. I cannot confirm who had done it. I figured out that it could have been done by Mirko (son of Spiro) Pekez, Jovo Jandric and Milorad Savic,” Jandric said, adding that Mirko (son of Mile) Pekez was never a member of the police.

The trial is due to continue on February 22.