Witness Gives up Previous Statements

Defence witness Zaim Causevic says before the District Court in Banja Luka that his statements given during the investigation, in which he spoke about the indictees’ participation in crimes, are incorrect.

Testifying at the trial of Semir Alukic and Fikret Hirkic, who are charged with crimes in Prijedor, he said that he gave such statements to police and prosecution out of fear.

“I was afraid, so I confirmed what they asked me on the basis of some documents, which the police and the Prosecutor had,” Causevic said.

Alukic’s Defence attorney Asim Crnalic asked the witness how come that his three statements given to police and the Prosecutor were almost identical to each other and that he was saying different things at the trial today.

Causevic responded by saying that he said those things during the investigation out of fear, explaining that in his last statement given to the Prosecution he said, by mistake, that he agreed with his previous statements, because he thought that the Prosecutor was actually asking him whether he agreed with his last sentence.

When asked by Trial Chamber Chairwoman Olga Pantic if the Prosecutor threatened or blackmailed him, Causevic said that he was not threatened and that the Prosecutor treated him in a correct manner.

The indictment alleges that Alukic and five other persons participated in the murder of civilian Ostoja Baltic from Prijedor on the trunk road between Prijedor and Banja Luka.

It further alleges that, on that same day Alukic and Hirkic, who were accompanied by seven other people, opened fire at a house in Podgradje hamlet, near Prijedor, while cursing “a Serbian mother”, and killed Bozo Indjic from Podgradje. They are charged with having tried to kill Stojanka D. and her daughter Snjezana C., who managed to escape.