Milisavljevic et al: Saw His Wife Burning
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Meho Celik said that he and other men from his village were hiding in the woods, when he saw two vehicles coming to the village on June 3, 1992. He said he then heard shooting and saw his house on fire.
“Women were killed and set on fire. My wife and Smajo Celik’s wife were killed in the stable. I saw that my wife was still on fire from her spine to her head. I poured water on her. I cooled the bones. I collected them later on,” Celik recalled, adding that he had been married to his wife for 40 years.
According to him, a few other women were killed and set on fire on that day.
Predrag Milisavljevic, Milos Pantelic and Ljubomir Tasic are charged by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina with having participated in the murders, forcible resettlement, detention, torture and other inhumane acts against the Bosniak population.
The indictment alleges that Milisavljevic and Pantelic committed those crimes from April to June 1992 in their capacity as members of reserve police forces in Visegrad and Tasic as member of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS.
Witness Celik said that he did not know indictees Milisavljevic and Pantelic and that Tasic was his neighbour, adding that he used to see him after the war and that he “trusted him as a neighbour”.
He said that he saw Tasic on a plateau in Visegrad, when the convoy of Bosniaks departed towards Skoplje or Olovo, as they said.
Celik mentioned that his neighbour Dervis Kasapovic, who was at a meeting with Tasic in Bosanska Jagodina, told him that they were ordered to leave the village.
“Dervis said that they ordered us to move out and that all those, who stayed in the village, would be killed,” Celik said.
He mentioned that able-bodies men were separated from women, children and the elderly on a hill near Kolakovici village, adding that he heard that they were later killed.
“When they separated the men, I was about to leave the bus. A soldier then asked me when I was born. When I replied, he said I should not come out of the bus,” Celik said.
The trial is due to continue on January 29.
