Local Justice – Stjepanovic: Sound of Shooting

Witness Simo Cancarevic said that at the beginning of the war he stood sentinel with other Bosanska Bijela village local residents, adding they were deployed to the Kukavicjak area, where an incident took place on June 11, 1992.“I was not on duty on that day, but I heard the sound of shooting and bomb detonations coming from that direction. (…) I headed towards the sound of the shooting. I was accompanied by a few other Croat neighbours.”Upon our arrival, we found out that a group of armed Croat soldiers had gone to the part of the village inhabited by Serbs, from where the sound of shooting was coming,” said Cancarevic.Responding to the Trial Chamber’s questions, Cancarevic said that he could not remember seeing indictee Stjepanovic in Bijela on that day or among the soldiers who participated in the attack, because he was “in a state of shock due to the shooting and detonations”.Ivan Stjepanovic, former member of the Reconnaissance Squad with the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with having participated in the incident in the Kukavicjak area.The Brcko District Prosecution alleges that, from June 1992 to September 1994, Stjepanovic committed several murders and participated in inhumane treatment, robberies and the destruction of property in Bijela, Cerik and Bukvik villages, Brcko municipality.Witness Cancarevic said that he heard that three Serb men were killed, a few men were wounded and several men captured during the course of the attack. He said that Bijela village was attacked again on the same day and several houses were set on fire.Marijan Lamesic, a Prosecution witness who also testified at this hearing, acted as a mediator between the Croat and Serb Crisis Committees on the eve of the breakout of conflict in Bijela. He said that the Committees were established with the aim of preserving peace in the village.The witness said that the first armed incident happened in that area on June 11, 1992, when, “all of a sudden we heard shooting coming from a village which was mostly inhabited by Serbs”.“We were surprised by that, because we did not know what was going on or who was shooting. Shortly after that a vehicle transporting armed soldiers and two captured Serb civilians drove through the center of Bosanska Bijela,” Lamesic said, adding he “did not see” indictee Stjepanovic on that day or in the days that followed.M.A.———————————————————————————————–This article is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.) The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of Balkan investigative reporting network (BIRN) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.