Jevic et al: Taking away of a boy and then a shot

Protected witness S-125, who was a member of the Police Training Centre from Mount Jahorina , said that one of the commanders ordered to one member of the Squad to take away the boy.

“Seven or eight people are captured during the search. One child, not older that 13 years, was among them. When we went down the road, one of the commanders asked him: ‘What are you doing here?’ He ordered one man to take him aside. A shot was heard. The soldier returned alone”, the witness said.

He also spoke about other cases of murders and shootings in and around Konjevic Polje during the capturing of men of Bosniak nationality, who, after the Serb forces took over Srebrenica, went to Tuzla through the woods.

He said that during the night one man was killed on the road, and that they saw his body on the road in the morning. He also recounts that during the night there was an exchange of fire and how one man was wounded.

“He ran back and it could be heard from the direction of the stream how he called his people and telling them that he is wounded. He moaned until the morning when Brko went there and we heard a shot. I did not see what happened, but I could guess”, said S-125.

As he said, Brko was the commander of his Squad, but he does not know what his name was. The witness identified the indictee Dusko Jevic as Chief Commander of the Jahorina’s Detachment, which, while they were on the ground, saw only once in the school where they were located.

Jevic, together with Mendeljev Djuric, Goran Markovic and Nedjo Ikonic is on trial for participating in the forcible resettlement of the Bosniak population from the Srebrenica area and the murder of about 1,000 men in Kravica.

The indictment alleges that Jevic was Commander of the Jahorina Training Centre with the Special Brigade of Republika Srpska police, Djuric and Ikonic were Company Commanders and Markovic was a Squad Commander.

The witness told how the group between 100 and 200 men was captured and were taken in the direction of Konjevic Polje, and how he once heard a burst of shots in one facility where the prisoners were kept.

“In the facility where they were captured, a song could be heard, Chetnik songs were sung. Suddenly, a burst of fire resounded. The song ended and screams were heard”, the witness said, adding that members of his unit were not responsible for guarding this facility.

Answering questions of the Defence, the witness confirmed that he did not see with his own eyes the murder in that facility in Konjevic Polje, or the killing of the boy, the wounded man by the stream, or a man on the road.

S-125 testified that while he was in school, volunteers were required for a specific task and two of his colleagues volunteered.

“Brko was there. I remember that he commented that it is not good for them…These two men were not there for two days. We saw them on the truck. They were sitting on the bumper, and people were under the tarpaulin”, said the witness.

Asked whether he found out later what the task of the two volunteers was, he replied that they were “gossiping that they were taking away people to execution, and also searching and taking away money”.

The continuation of the trial is scheduled for Monday, 5 December.