Indictee’s Beating

Zenica Cantonal Prosecution witness Brutus said that he lived in Zepce, as a civilian, when he was taken to a detention camp. He said that he was taken from the detention camp to other locations, where he performed labour and evacuated killed members of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO.

“We climbed up a mountain. We were ordered to clean a part of a watershed. I walked a bit lower than the others. I saw between 12 and 14 our guys. A man named Matan was standing about six metres away from them. I did not know him, so I passed by him,” the witness said.

The witness said that Matan was wearing a raincoat and a semi-automatic gun and that he addressed him before hitting him.

“He hit me on my left thigh with his gun. I crouched down. He then hit me on my anus and testicle with the rifle butt. I kept quiet for two or three days, but then I went to the dispensary, where they noticed that there was a lot of pus. They sent me to a hospital in Zepce. I was not able to move for a month,” Brutus said.

The witness pointed to indictee Martic in the courtroom, saying that he was the person, who hit him.

“I think that this is that man, except that he had about 20 kilograms less. He looked like Alija Sirotanovic,” he said.

Martic, former member of HVO, is on trial for having escorted, in July 1993, a group of captured members of the Army of BiH from the school building in Perkovici to HVO positions, where he abused them and hit them on various parts of their bodes with a rifle butt and shot at two of them.

Witness Brutus said that he was not severely ill and that he got infections every three months.

“I do not leave my house due to urinary problems. I have atherosclerosis, my eye fell out, my nose is broken, but I cannot say whether all of this is a consequence of that beating, because much time has passed. Some things appear as one ages,” he said.

The Defence proposed the examination of six witnesses in order to prove that HVO forces were not present at those locations when the crimes were committed, and that the indictee was mobilised as a shepherd and that he was not given any other tasks.

The trial is due to continue on July 10.