Krsmanovic: Murder of People Kidnapped From Bus

“I came to Vilina Vlas on business. There were 18 people there, a journalist from the Duga magazine from Belgrade, as well as Milan Lukic and Oliver Krsmanovic. Milan said that the journalist was our man. There was talk that Milan brought the Muslims from a bus. They told them to take their money out and lie down on the ground. They hit them and kicked them,” said protected witness VVS.

He said that one of the prisoners pleaded to let him call his brother and that he would pay 5,000 Deutschemarks. Oliver hugged him and said: ‘Okay, we’ll see what we can do,” said the witness.

He added that he saw Milan Lukic and Krsmanovic put the imprisoned Bosniaks on a truck, which set off towards Visegrad.
“I saw them being led away… The path to the lake was short. I heard gunfire… Around fifty local women and children watched it happen,” said VVS, who testified under special measures of protection for endangered and threatened witnesses.

His testimony was read out by the Trial Chamber, after another chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina examined him in December. Special measures approved in this case include that no one knows the identity of the witness except for the prosecutor and the original chamber that examined him.

VVS specified he knew Krsmanovic and often saw him with Milan Lukic, who was sentenced by The Hague Tribunal’s first instance verdict to a life imprisonment.

“They did what they pleased, they could kill people of all ethnicity and anyone who opposed them, and get away with it,” said the witness, adding that he heard Lukic say he “laid to rest a thousand souls”.

According to the indictment, Krsmanovic took part with Lukic and others in capturing 16 Bosniak civilians from Serbia, who travelled on the bus from Priboj, on October 22, 1992, in the municipality of Rudo. It is specified that they took the civilians to Vilina Vlas, where they beat them with wooden batons and then took their lives.

Krsmanovic is also charged, as a member of the Second Podrinje Light Infantry Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska, with the inhumane treatment of a mentally challenged victim, Mujo Paranglija, in the Rasadnik camp in Rogatica.

The prosecution’s protected witness OK-19 talked about this event, since he was also imprisoned in Rasadnik at the time. He said that at one time Krsmanovic, Lukic and Ristic, also known as Kinez, came to his cell.

“The man was from Zepa, just like me. He was not aware of the situation he was in (…) Mujo asked everyone he saw: “Brother, give me a cigarette.” He asked them too, and they increased the length of the flame on his lighter. He started crying, fell down and once again asked for a cigarette. They started beating him,” recalled OK-19.

Several days later, the witness said, Mujo Paranglija was taken away and no one saw him again.

OK-19 said that he saw Lukic, Krsmanovic and others when he himself was captured in 1995 while he was trying to leave Zepa. While they were being taken towards Visegrad, he said, a group of prisoners was taken out to a drinking-fountain together with Lukic, and inside the vehicle where he was with Krsmanovic he heard the shots.

When he met the defendant again later in Rasadnik, Krsmanovic asked him whether he knew him. When the witness out of fear said he did not remember him, Krsmanovic asked him: “Don’t you remember that one time when we killed your people?”

The trial will resume on Tuesday, November 13.