Witness ‘Extinguished Burning Bodies Outside Bosnia Mosque’

The state prosecution on Monday read the statement from Halima Avdic, who was unwell and unable to come to court, explaining that in June 1992, when Serb soldiers came to Carakovo, she was in her house with her husband, adult sons, daughter-in-law and grandchild.

Avdic said the soldiers ordered her husband and brother-in-law, who happened to be in the house at the time, to go to the mosque, but her sister-in-law intervened, saying that they were only pensioners, after which the Serbs went away.

“In the afternoon I learnt from neighbour Abida Kahteran that other neighbours, including her son Kemal, were murdered in front of the mosque… Abida said her son’s body was on fire and told us to bring buckets of water,” Avdic said in the statement originally given to Bosnia’s State Investigation and Protection Agency.

“I was extinguishing [fires on] bodies with [my] neighbour Asima, whose brother was also killed in front of the mosque,” the witness said.

The indictment says that on the morning of July 23, 1992, defendants Zoran Babic and Velemir Djuric, together with other people, on orders from third defendant Dragomir Soldat, led men out of their houses in Carakovo and took them to the local mosque, where they executed them.

The indictment alleges that some of the men who survived the shooting died when Djuric and Babic set the mosque on fire afterwards.

Avdic was the last prosecution witness and the first witnesses for the defence will be called on October 7.