Milisavljevic et al: First Witness Recognises the Executioner
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Predrag was the first one who fired two short bursts of bullets. People simply fell down. The first ten people were gone. Those men were killed. Predrag kept standing at the same place. ( ) Predrag was the executioner, said witness Ferid Spahic, who survived the shooting.
Spahic, who used to live in Smrijece village, Visegrad municipality, before the war, recognised indictee Milisavljevic in the courtroom, saying that he had known him since the school days.
Besides Milisavljevic, the Prosecution charges Milos Pantelic and Ljubomir Tasic with having participated in the murders, forcible resettlement of the population, detention, torture, forcible disappearances and other inhumane acts.
According to the charges, Milisavljevic and Pantelic participated in the murder of several tens of Bosniak civilians near the Paklenik pit, Sokolac municipality. It is alleged that Milisavljevic was the one who began shooting the prisoners first.
Milisavljevic and Pantelic allegedly committed those crimes as members of the reserve police forces in Visegrad and Tasic as member of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS in the period from April to June 1992.
In addition, they are charged with the forcible resettlement of more than 500 Bosniak civilians from the Visegrad area.
Witness Spahic identified indictee Tasic in the courtroom as well, saying that he informed him and four representatives of other villages, while they were in a café, that convoys would travel to Skopje, Macedonia, Olovo and Kladanj and that they should leave the Visegrad area, because whoever was found in the woods would be killed.
As he said, the local population from his village and other surrounding villages was hiding in the woods after six women from the Brijeg and Bare hamlets had been killed.
The witness said that a convoy departed from Visegrad on June 14, after indictee Tasic had told him to make a list of people who would travel to Skopje.
According to Spahic, Skopje was used to mislead people to make them join the convoy, because, when the convoy arrived in Isarica Brdo village, women, children and the elderly were separated from men, who were taken to the pit and shot.
The witness said that he was brutally beaten up twice prior to being taken to the pit, adding that he managed to run away from there.
It was as if some force was pushing me for the first five or six steps. As I was entering the forest, somebody yelled: He is running away. I do not know what happened after that. I kept running. I heard shooting all over the place, the witness said.
The Defence is due to cross-examine Spahic on December 11.
A.S.
