Basic and Sijak: Inconvenient Wounding

Witness Ismat Abdulahovic said that Sijak underwent medical treatment due to the wounding for a month, adding that he worked occasionally.

Basic and Sijak, who were allegedly accompanied by two unknown soldiers, are charged with having forced a Croat female to have sexual intercourse with them in a prison located in the basement of the Sumarstvo building in Vares on January 25, 1994.

Witness Abdulahovic said that Sijak was wounded, just like five other military policemen, on January 6, 1994, but he occasionally worked following the medical treatment and limped for about a month.

“Sijak underwent medical treatment, but he occasionally came to work. On January 25 he attended a meeting at the General Headquarters of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Kakanj,” Abdulahovic said.

Defence witnesses Rifet Sokolar and Sabahudin Operta said that indictee Sijak was wounded at the beginning of January and that he attended a military meeting in Kakanj on January 25.

Operta said that the indictee accompanied him to Kakanj as his bodyguard, adding that they attended the meeting the whole day.

“Sijak was with me from the morning to evening,” the witness said.

Rifet Sokolar said that indictee Sijak was an officer with security bodies of the 122nd Light Brigade of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH and that he attended the meeting with Sabahudin Operta.

“We faced each other across the table during the meeting in Kakanj,” Sokolar said.

The trial is due to continue on November 12.
M.B.