Basic and Sijak: Moaning Heard at Night

Witness B told the Trial Chamber that his wife mentioned to him, after they were married in 2000, that she was “abused” during the war, but she did not speak about details.

“She would occasionally moan during night,” the witness said, adding that he did not know why it was happening.

As he said, in 1997 or 1998 his wife visited a psychiatrist, who advised her to give a statement to somebody about the things that had happened to her.

“When she gave a statement to the Women – Victims of War Association in 2009, she gave it to me to read it, but I did not even read the whole statement,” witness B said.

He said that his wife then told him that indictees Basic and Sijak raped her in a prison in Vares in 1994, when she visited her brother, who was detained in the prison.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Muhidin Basic and Mirsad Sijak with having forced a Croat female to have sexual intercourse with them in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH prison, which was located in the basement of the Sumarstvo building in Vares, on January 25, 1994.

According to the State Prosecution’s charges, Basic was Chief of the State Security Service Section in Olovo and Sijak was military policeman with the 122nd Light Brigade of ABiH at that time.

The trial is due to continue on May 28, 2012, when a team of experts will be examined.
M.B.