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”We stayed in the broken down bus the whole night. Some people gathered around the bus. They asked them to let us out so they could kill us. However, Mile did not let them do it. He said he would not allow them to do it. He mentioned his mother, who died ten days earlier, telling them: ‘Be humane. These are women and children’,” protected witness O3 said, testifying in a separate room.
Skrbic, Zoran Babic, Milorad Radakovic, Ljubisa Cetic, Dusan Jankovic and Zeljko Stojnic, former members of the Public Safety Station in Prijedor and Police Interventions Squad, are charged with participation in the shooting of about 200 civilians at Koricanske stijene on August 21, 1992. The civilians had previously been separated from the rest of the convoy traveling from Prijedor to Travnik.
The protected witness said that he spent three and a half months in Omarska and Trnopolje detention camps prior to leaving Prijedor. He said his daughter-in-law told him about the convoy on August 21, 1992.
“We left for the playground in Tukovi. When we arrived we saw buses, trucks and many people. They took us to the buses. We did not get on the buses by ourselves; they pushed us – the guards pushed us. They had sticks and cables, which they used to push people into the buses. People jumped into the buses, trying to hide from them. I saw Zoran Babic. He had a dog. He pushed people as well,” the witness said.
O3 told the Court that “two or three soldiers, who had stockings on their heads” escorted his bus, adding that “Mile” joined the convoy “at its first stop in Banja Luka”.
The witness said “the escorts” robbed the bus passengers and took away jewelry from women.
“The masked people were with us until we arrived at Vlasic. Then they disappeared. Mile was the only one who stayed with us, but he did not do that stuff and rob people,” O3 said.
The indictment alleges that members of the Interventions Squad took valuables, jewelry and money from the convoy passengers.
“The bus broke down in the woods on Mount Vlasic. The rest of the convoy left, but we stayed. They said the bus was broken, but it was not. A jeep arrived.
Some people asked them to let them kill us, but Mile did not let them do it. We stayed there the whole night,” the witness said, adding that the bus carried on to its final destination in the vicinity of Travnik the following day.
During questioning the witness named the people he saw at the convoy departure location, reading their last names from a piece of paper he had brought with him to court. The list contained the following last names: Zoric, Babic, Radakovic and Cetic. The Trial Chamber took the piece of paper from the witness, noting that it had been established that he was not the one who had written the names.
Nenad Stojakovic testified as the second witness for the third indictee’s Defence. He said he drove one of the buses in the convoy on August 21, 1992. He said he “picked up” the passengers in Trnopolje and then joined the rest of the convoy “on the Banja Luka road”.
Stojakovic said that a young man named “Amir or Damir” escorted the bus he was driving.
After concluding a guilt admission agreement, Damir Ivankovic was sentenced to 14 years in prison for participation in the murder of civilians at Koricanske stijene.
“When we stopped by the Ugar river, I heard Damir saying some people should be separated from the others as they were to be exchanged. At that moment they separated some men, who stayed behind. I continued and took the rest of the people to the final destination,” the witness said.
Stojakovic said that on his way back to Prijedor he saw “blood on the road and civilian clothes” on one part of the road. He said he found out that the previously separated men had been killed.
“I continued my journey. I saw a bus, in which there were some passengers. I was told the bus had broken down. Mile Crnogorac was the bus driver. I think I saw Skrbic as well. He asked me if they could use my bus to drive the passengers to the destination,” the witness said.
The next hearing is due to take place on Tuesday, February 9.
