Lalovic: Horrible Cruelty

Protected witness S4 told the Trial Chamber that she was captured on August 1, 1992 and taken to the Miladin Radojevic school building in Kalinovik, where she was raped by a man named Dado and another soldier.

“Dado took me from the classroom in which I was held to another one. He told me: ‘You have to satisfy five men tonight’. He then ordered me to take my clothes off. I refused to do it and he said: ‘Don’t make me bring your kids’. After that I stripped. He raped me on a table in a horrible way. He was cruel like an animal. He pushed his genitals into my mouth… When he was done, another soldier came. I just remember he had long hair. He did the same thing to me,” witness S4 recalled.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Slavko Lalovic, known as Ustasa, former member of the reserve forces with the Public Safety Station in Kalinovik, with having allowed soldiers to go inside the Miladin Radojevic school building, where he worked as a guard, and commit violence against civilians who were unlawfully detained in the building.

According to the charges, Lalovic enabled two members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, to enter the school building and rape a female detainee in late August 1992.

The witness said that Dado took her our one night before the rape too, but he did not do any harm to her.

“One night before they raped me, Dado and other soldiers, who were accompanied by guard Slavko Lalovic, came to the classroom in which I was held. In the night when I was raped, there was a guard in the school, but I cannot remember who it was,” witness S4 said, adding that some people were murdered in the school too, while many men, women and children were taken away and never came back.

The witness said that after she was raped, she wanted to go back to the classroom in which her daughters and other women were held, but she noticed that some boards were nailed across the classroom door. “I pulled the nails out with my hands because I was terrified and I wanted to see my daughters,” witness S4 said.

During the course of her testimony witness S4 said that he husband was captured on the same day as her, adding that he was then taken to the school building and transferred her to the Barutni magacin (Gunpowder Depot) in Kalinovik, where he was last seen.

“A woman told me that they stripped him and two Pervan guys naked and took them in the direction of Rogoj. He has been gone since. He is registered as a missing person,” the protected witness said.

The trial is due to continue on May 26 this year, when indictee Lalovic will testify in his own defence.