Bosnian Serbs ‘Used Prisoners as Human Shields’

The prosecution witness, Hikmet Brkic, told the court in Sarajevo on Wednesday that while he was locked up in the Planjina Kuca detention centre in Vogosca in 1992, Bosnian Serb fighters took him to nearby Zuc hill to act as a human shield.

“We were first held in a pit. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You wait. Some people are taken away. Then a prisoner told us that all of us are going to be taken to be human shields. And then we were carrying the wounded and dead. We were a human target,” said Brkic, adding that some camp prisoners were either killed or wounded.

He said that the prisoners were taken to the pit by the defendant in the trial, Branco Vlaco, who told them he was the warden of the Planjina Kuca detention centre.

“He treated me with respect. He did not beat me, but I saw him beat another man,” said the witness.

According to the prosecution, Vlaco was the warden of the Bunker, Planjina Kuca, Sonja and Nakina Garaza detention camps in Vogosca, where he established a system to abuse imprisoned civilians.

Prisoners were murdered, tortured and abused, forced to do hard labour and used as human shields. Many of them were killed and dozens are still considered missing.

While being held at Planjina Kuca, the witness said he was taken to do hard labour, and that once Vlaco selected him to go to Zuc hill to dig trenches.

“We did everything, from digging trenches to making underground rooms, we cut wood… You worked like a slave. Whatever someone asked you to do, you had to do it,” he said.

Speaking about the conditions at Planjina Kuca, the witness said they were better than at other detention facilities in which he had been held captive before, but that during the four months that he was imprisoned there, he was allowed to bathe only once.

“Vlaco and his guards took us to the river to bathe. But it was not bathing but harassment,” he said.

The trial will resume on September 11.