School ‘Drenched With Prisoners’ Blood’

The protected prosecution witness codenamed S-2 told the court on Monday that he saw defendant Savo Babic immediately before being locked up in the Vuk Karadzic primary school in 1992, and later twice inside the school where prisoners were brutally and repeatedly beaten.

He said that fighters he referred to as ‘Arkan’s Men’ (militiamen loyal to notorious Serbian paramilitary boss Zeljko Raznatovic alias ‘Arkan’) came to Bratunac in April or May 1992, and among them was Babic.

The witness said that on May 10, 1992, he was taken to the police station, where he saw defendant Babic, and then to the primary school, where he was held in the school gymnasium and saw “locker rooms full of blood”.

There were around 500 or 600 detainees being held in the gymnasium, he said.

One time, he said, he was put against a wall together with 30 other men and beaten.

“They beat us with broomsticks, one blow was enough to bring you down to the floor. I fainted, but came to when I was hit on the spine. They stamped on us,” said the witness.

After being beaten, the witness claimed, a guard called Slavoljub Bucalina forced them to clean up their own blood, “because others will come and everything has to be clean”.

S-2 said they were beaten the most by two fighters known as ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Bane’, who he said were Arkan’s men.

“Macedonian beat me with a police baton on the side, the head, the knees. And Bane killed eight men with his gun, some of whom he first beat with a broomstick and then shot with a gun,” said the witness.

One of the prisoners, the witness said, was beaten first with a broomstick, after which blood started pouring from his ears, nose and mouth, and then his assailants hit him on the head so hard that his “head split and his brain spilled out onto the floor”.

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 trial will resume on June 10.