Selimovic et al: Questioning Followed by Beating
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Statements given by Mile Zec, Rade Paras and Jovo Reljic, former members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, who were previously examined by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the District Court in Banja Luka, were heard in the courtroom.
The Prosecution witnesses said in their statements that members of the ABiH Fifth Corps beat them in detention buildings in Bihac and Cazin, but they were not able to positively identify the indictees as the perpetrators
Mehura Selimovic, Adil Ruznic and Emir Mustafic, former ABiH members. are charged with crimes committed in Bosnian Krajina. The indictment charges Selimovic, Ruznic and Mustafic with having assisted in and abetted the detention of Serb soldiers and civilians in detention centers in Bihac, Cazin and Bosanski Petrovac in the period from 1994 to 1996.
The Prosecution alleges that Selimovic was Counter-intelligence Officer, Operational Officer and Deputy Chief of the Military Security Service Section with the Fifth Corps of ABiH, Ruznic was Assistant Commander for Security and Operational Officer with the same Section and Mustafic was a member of the Military Police with the Fifth Corps.
Witnesses Zec and Paras said that ABiH members captured them in November 1995. They said they were then detained in Bihac, where they were questioned and beaten.
“We were detained in a military barracks in Bihac, but I do not know what it was called. One evening they took us to an office, where we saw five men. They gave us a piece of paper with 30 questions, but we did not know the answers. We did not know we were supposed to say what they wanted to hear, so they started hitting us with their feet and hands,” Zec said.
This witness said that “a military policeman whose eye was injured”, took notes during the course of the examination of the prisoners. He said he heard that the man was editor of a children’s show on Bihac Radio. Zec said that the military policeman did not beat him, but “a captain” did beat him during the course of his detention.
The witness was not able to recognise the persons among the indictees in the courtroom.
Paras said that ABiH members “examined him every other day”, because it was written in his identification card that he came from Trnopolje, near Prijedor, where a detention camp for Bosniaks and Croats was located.
“They used to beat me more than other detainees. They kept asking me about mass graves. I did not know anything about them, because I had not lived in Trnopolje in the years before the war. I was just born there.
“Following the questioning, they would start beating me, because I did not know the answers to their questions,” Paras said, adding he regretted that he did not know who the people were who beat him.
Third Prosecution witness Reljic said that ABiH members wounded and captured him in front of his house in Racici village, Bihac municipality on October 26, 1994. The witness said he was “saved” by a nurse known as Misko, who prevented a soldier from killing him. He was transferred to a hospital in Bihac with the help of that man and he underwent surgery on the same day.
“I was transferred from the hospital to the military barracks in Bihac. I was not beaten during the course of my stay in the barracks, but they beat me up, just like the other bus passengers, on our way to Cazin. They hit us with sticks,” Reljic said, adding that he was beaten in a similar way, with sticks, on March 3, 1995, when he was exchanged.
The trial is due to continue on March 2 this year.
A.S.
