Dronjak: Murders in Kamenica

In the summer of 1992 Sida Subasic lost two sons, who were taken to the Kamenica detention camp and killed.

Witness Sida told the Trial Chamber that, on an unknown date in 1992 her sons went to the woods in the vicinity of Biljani, Sanski most municipality, where, as she said, indictee Dronjak captured them and took them to the Kamenica detention camp, near Drvar. She said that she found out about it when she
visited her sons later on.

“When I came to Kamenica to see my sons, because I heard that they were held in Kamenica, I saw indictee Dronjak, who told me that he had ‘captured them in the woods and brought them here’,” Subasic said, adding that the indictee allowed her to see her sons and enabled her to bring them food every day.

According to the witness, her sons Fuad, Jasmin and Izudin ran away to the woods together, but only two of them were held in Kamenica detention camp.She said that she did not know what had happened to her third son, Izudin.

She said that Ratko Dronjak ordered some soldier to bring her sons.

“Their clothes were torn. They had bruises on their bodies, as if somebody had tried to strangle them. They looked horrible,” Subasic said, describing the way her sons looked when she visited them in Kamenica detention camp.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Ratko Dronjak, former Commander and Manager of Kamenica detention camp and the “Slavko Rodic” school building prison in Drvar, with having organised the unlawful detention of Bosniak and Croat civilians and prisoners of war in the period from 1992 to
1995.

Witness Subasic said that, one day after she had visited her sons, she went to Kamenica detention camp again, taking food and clothes to her sons, but, as she said, upon her arrival she neither saw her sons nor the indictee.

“Soldiers told me that my sons had been exchanged, adding that Dronjak had gone home. I went to his house, but his wife, who opened the door, said that he was not there,” the witness said. She was not able to recognise the indictee in the courtroom.

“I would not know if he is here now,” the witness said.

The mother of the missing sons said that Izudin was the first of her sons whose body was found. She did not say when it happened. She said that she identified him in the school building in Kljuc, where the bodies had been brought. The two other sons, whom she visited in Kamenica detention camp, were found later on. She said that their bodies were found in the vicinity of Bihac.

The Defence and indictee reacted to the part of Subasic’s statement referring to the indictee’s house. The witness explained that the house was situated “at an isolated location” in the vicinity of Kamenica.

After the witness had described the location, Slobodan Peric, Defence attorney of the indictee, said that Dronjak did not live in the house described by the witness.

“I will not bother you anymore, but your children were obviously not held in Kamenica,” the Defence attorney said.

The Trial Chamber reacted immediately, saying: “This is very unprofessional,” said Trial Chamber Chairwoman Minka Kreho. Indictee Dronjak said that he had never lived in a house, but in an apartment.

“I am responsibly saying that I have never seen this person or contacted her,” indictee Dronjak said.

Second witness Kata Dujmovic told the Trial Chamber that, while she and her mother lived in Bihac, her father Jozo Majstorovic was taken from his house in Zavalje village, about 10 kilometers away from Bihac, to Kamenica detention camp in November 1992. The witness said that surviving detainees informed her that her father had been taken away.

“Marko Ivusic and a man named Zlaja, whose last name I do not know, told me that they were in the detention camp with my father, but they did not say how he died,” the witness said, adding that, after having spoken to a physician, she found out that her father died in a violent way.

“My dad had a 4-5 cm long cut on his forehead and a hole in his nape, as a part of his skull was crushed,” said Dujmovic, who identified her father’s body among 48 bodies in a mortuary in Bihac in December 1994.

The trial is due to continue on October 6 this year.

M.B.