Wartime Prisoners ‘Murdered’ at Bosnian School

A prosecution witness at the trial of Savo Babic said that imprisoned Bosniaks were murdered and beaten in the Vuk Karadzic primary school in Bratunac.

Prosecution witness Saban Dzananovic told the Sarajevo court on Monday that he was held captive in the Vuk Karadzic primary school’s gymnasium in the eastern Bosnian town of Bratunac between May 10 and 13, 1992.

Dzananovic said that he saw dead bodies and people with injuries sustained during beatings in the school gymnasium, while eight detainees also suffocated due to the lack of air.

“We were lined up like sardines, that is how eight people suffocated,” he said.

He said that the attacks on prisoners were carried out by men in civilian clothing who were under the control of notorious Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic ‘Arkan’.

“I found [a prisoner called] Saban dead at the entrance to the room. He was naked to the waist, his back was blue from the beating,” Dzananovic said.

He said that three other prisoners were murdered and “there were puddles of blood every metre or so on the parquet in the gymnasium”.

The prosecution charges Babic, then commander of the military police in Bratunac, with ordering, committing and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the school in May 1992.

Around 400 detained civilians were beaten and tortured every day, and several dozen were killed or died as a result of the conditions at the school, the indictment alleges.

The witness said that he knew defendant Babic from before as a police commander but that he did not see him at the school.

The trial is scheduled to resume on March 25.