Bosnian Serb Rejects Visegrad Rape Allegation

Defence witness Lelek, who is already serving a 16-year sentence for war crimes in Visegrad, told the court on Tuesday that although he knew Krsmanovic, he never met or committed crimes with him in 1992.

“I never had coffee with Oliver, neither before nor during the war. I don’t know about those events taking place, let alone that I participated in them,” he said.

Lelek was found guilty of two crimes for which Krsmanovic is also indicted: the illegal arrest of two Bosniaks in the settlement of Crnca and the rape of a woman in June 1992 at the Vilina Vlas spa, where women were detained during the conflict.

However Lelek denied that he took part in the rape, and questioned the victim’s testimony.

“In her written deposition, she told the inspectors that Oliver participated in the crime as well, that she was taken to the spa for seven days and that I raped her on the fifth day. Here at the trial she did not mention Oliver and said it happened only once,” he said.

He said that during the war he was a policeman and never went to the spa, and that none of the witnesses who have testified at the Hague Tribunal or the Bosnian court have ever said said they saw him there with Krsmanovic.

As regards the arrest of the Bosniaks from Crnca, Lelek said that a witness at the trial who said he was involved had actually recognised him because she remembered him from the time when he was three years old.

Krsmanovic is charged, as a member of the Second Podrinje Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, with the murders of Bosniak civilians as well as forced disappearances and rapes in Visegrad.

The trial will resume on September 17.