Vlahovic: Something worse than this could not have happened

Witness Ljubica Antolic said that indictee Vlahovic took her husband and father-in-law on June 16, 1992, and they never came back.

“Something worse than this could not have happened,” said Antolic.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina indictment charges Vlahovic with having killed and participated in the murder of several persons in the Grbavica, Vraca and Kovacici municipalities in 1992 and participated in the abuse of non-Serb citizens and took money and other valuable possessions from them.

A second indictment was filed against Vlahovic, charging him with the murder and forcible disappearances of 14 persons and rape and abuse of civilians.

Antolic said that a soldier, who took one neighbour from the stairs, came to her door and asked for her husband.

“My husband and father-in-law promptly went out and the soldier ordered them to go with him, after which they left”, said witness, adding that she watched from the window how they took them into the car.

After about 20 minutes, the witness said that the husband and father-in-law came back and told her that they were at the Headquarters in Grbavica. When Zoran Vitkovic saw them, he let them go, but again the same soldier came and took them away.

When witness saw that they were taking them in the car again, she called the neighbour to stop them. “A neighbor shouted: ‘Batko, stop’, and the car stopped. But it started again”, said Antolic, adding that she went to different places to look for them but they were nowhere to be found.

The witness pointed out that she identified the bodies of her husband and father-in-law in September 1999, after the excavation at Petrovacka krivina.

Witness Elma Nuhanovic said that her husband, along with a neighbour from the building were taken away and spoke how she found out from the wife of that neighbour that the indictee took them away.

“My neighbour told me that she wanted to throw a sweater from the balcony to her husband so that he would not be cold, but the soldier who took them away turned around, pointed a gun at the neighbour and said, ‘that will not be necessary, go inside’” said Nuhanovic.

When the neighbour came to police station to give a statement about that event, she identified indictee Vlahovic in these pictures.

“I asked her whether she is certain that he took ours, and she told me ‘I am sure and I will not forget him while I am alive’”, witness Nuhanovic quoted the neighbour’s words.

The remains of her husband and neighbour were also found in the tomb on Petrovacka krivina in 1999.

The continuation of the trial has been scheduled for December 8 this year.