Indictment for Visegrad Crimes Filed

Jovan and Goran Popovic are charged with having participated, as members of Serb armed formations, in the persecution of the Bosniak civilian population from Rodic Brdo village, Visegrad municipality, from the beginning of April 1992 to the end of December 1995.

“They participated in the persecution of the population by committing murders, forced resettlement, unlawful detention, rape, sexual enslavement, forced disappearances, destruction and stealing of property, causing of severe suffering and injuries of bodily integrity and other inhumane acts,” the Prosecution’s announcement says.

Jovan Popovic is charged with having participated, along with several armed members of the Serb Army, paramilitary formations and police, which were led by Milan Lukic, in an attack, search, unlawful arrests and taking away of men from their houses in Rodica Brdo village.

On that occasion four civilians were arrested and taken to the Police Station in Visegrad, where they were killed. It is further alleged that Jovan Popovic abused members of their families and threatened them by saying that he would kill them.

“Later on that same day Popovic returned to the village and told the mother of one of the civilians who had been taken away, that he had killed her son and that “River Drina has taken him away”. Bodies of two of those civilians have been exhumed, while the bodies of the two remaining ones have still not been found,” the announcement says.

The Hague Tribunal sentenced Lukic to life imprisonment for having committed crimes in Visegrad.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Jovan Popovic with having held a woman and her two minor children in slavery and forced them to perform various agricultural work on his land in mid-June 1992.

“The body of this Bosniak woman was exhumed at Djurevica Polje, Visegrad municipality, on May 16, 2012. Her children went missing without trace,” the State Prosecution says in its announcement.

Goran Popovic, former guard in Uzamnica detention camp, is charged with having participated in the abuse, beating, torture and sexual abuse of detained men and women. According to the charges, he forced the detainees to sing Chetnik songs and eat pork.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina alleges that, in late December 1992 Goran Popovic, who was accompanied by another guard, took two female detainees to a meadow near the hangar, where a group of soldiers was, on several occasions.

“He forced them to have sexual intercourse with detainees. When the two women refused to do it, he beat them with his legs, hands and wooden batons on all parts of their bodies. The women had severe injuries due to the beating,” the announcement says.

The Prosecution said that indictees Popovic were at liberty.

The indictment was filed with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for confirmation.