Bundalo et al: Trial adjourned

Due to the sudden electricity cut in the State Court building during the testimony of Elvir Cemo the trial was adjourned. The public was not informed when it might continue.

Prosecution witness Cemo spoke about his detention in Kalinovik in the course of 1992.

“I was captured, just like my family and other residents from Trnovo, on May 31, 1992. On the same day we were taken to a weekend house in Tosici village, where they separated women and us children and transferred us to a school building in Kalinovik,” said Cemo, who was 12 years old at the time.

The State Prosecution charges Ratko Bundalo, Nedjo Zeljaja and Djordjislav Askraba with a number of crimes committed in Kalinovik in 1992 and 1993.

“I remember that policemen guarded us in the school building in Kalinovik. On one occasion a drunk policeman came and mistreated us. One of the guards said that they should call Zeljaja. Later on he took away the policeman, who was causing trouble,” Cemo recalled, adding that his mother told him that Zeljaja was the commander of police in Kalinovik.

The indictment alleges that Zeljaja was commander of the Public Safety Station in Kalinovik, Bundalo was commander of Kalinovik Tactical Group and Askraba was supervisor of the “Barutni magacin” detention camp.

Cemo recalled his father, who was detained at some other location.

“My mother asked a policeman to let us see my father. We met him in a room in the police building. He cried and told us that he had been mistreated,” Cemo said, adding that he still did not know anything about his father.

Cemo was exchanged in June 1992.

The Prosecution examined Ranko Erbez, who was a member of reserve police forces with the Police Station Section in Ulog, Kalinovik municipality, in the course of 1992.

“Some time in late June 1992 Ratko Govedarica, commander of that Section, asked me and another policeman to bring Imam Jasar Vuk. This was not an arrest or detention. I remember that, later on, Govedarica and Milivoje Sladoje took Jasar to Kalinovik,” Erbez said.

This witness said that, “in June or July 1992” some refugees from Gacko were accommodated in the school in Ulog, adding that they were guarded by “local sentry,” but they could “walk freely”.

“I remember that a person named Salko was the only one who escaped from the school building. I do not know why he escaped as everyone could freely walk in Ulog,” Erbez said.

Following a long insistence by the Prosecution and Trial Chamber to say who was the commander of the Public Safety Station in Kalinovik, the witness said that Nedjo Zeljaja performed the function in the course of 1992.

According to the official timetable of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the trial is due to continue on Monday, November 10.