Sulejman Mujagic’s Partial Recollections

“My Squad was elsewhere in the field. I received an order from the Command to go to Kumarica with 15 other soldiers in order to help them. Kumarica was about an hour and a half away. When we arrived to Kantarevici, we saw five or six unarmed members of the Fifth Corps. They were dirty. I asked them what they were doing. I told them to run away into the woods,” Mujagic said.

He said that he did not remember that they captured two wounded members of the 505th Brigade, but his soldiers informed him about that afterwards.

“They told us that Fikret Topcagic was killed and that they had two captives, who were wounded, and that one of them died,” Mujagic said, adding that he found out what actions were charged upon him only after having been arrested.

According to the charges, following the capture and physical abuse of members of the 505th Brigade of the Fifth Corps with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Kumarica region, Velika Kladusa municipality, on March 6, 1995, Mujagic killed Ekrem Baltic and wounded Nisvet Cordic from an automatic gun.

The indictee said that he had suffered from “certain mental problems since my young age”, but he had not undergone medical examinations due to a fear of some severe diagnosis.

The Defence proposed that Mujagic’s mental state be examined by an expert. The Court will render a decision concerning the proposal at a later stage.
As the hearing continued, Defence witnesses Asim Mujagic and Sifet Kantarevic testified. They said that they witnessed the event and that Baltic was not killed by a member of the National Defence of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region.

According to their testimonies, the two members of the 505th Brigade were wounded while being captured. As they said, one of them was severely wounded, so he died later.

“Both of them were wounded. When they saw us, they stopped. The one, who was dragging the severely wounded man, dropped him, so he fell down. It seemed that he was not alive. Tajso examined the one, who was left standing. He hit him a few times. Sulejman then came and told him to go towards our soldiers, which he did. The other one remained lying on the ground. I saw his body at the same place when I was passing by the following morning,” witness Mujagic said.

He said that the indictee was a relative of his, that he was wounded on his head and that he had mental problems.

Sifet Kantarevic said that he thought that the wounded captive was dead when his colleague dropped him.

“The other one said that he too was wounded and that he could not stand still. After that Tajso pointed a gun towards him and pulled the trigger, but the gun was not loaded. He then crawled towards Dzemal Latic’s house. Izet Brkic, whose brother was killed, shot at him, but he gave up after having fired about 30 bullets. He said: ‘As those 30 bullets have missed him, I will not fire any more’,” Kantarevic said.

The continuation of the trial is scheduled for December 2, when the last Defence witness will be examined.