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Emilija Pajic told the court that she left Derventa at the start of the war with her three children, but that her husband Mirko did not come along. For a while, she did not know what had happened to him.
“Then he sent a letter through the Red Cross that he was in camp. He told the kids and me: ‘don’t come to Derventa it’s dangerous. Only come when I send word.’ Unfortunately, I didn’t get that message,” said the witness.
At the end of August 1992, as the witness recalled, she went to Prnjavor to learn about her husband’s fate, and learned he was killed.
“I found a doctor who told me that he died on her hands. I asked why and she said that he wrote a note in English for the Red Cross in which he said that women and elderly were kept in the camp,” said the witness.
She said that she later learned from other prisoners that Josip Tolic was one of the persons responsible for her husband’s death.
Tolic told the witness he was sorry for her loss, to which the witness replied she did not want his sympathy.
Tolic, a former member of the 102nd Odzak Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council, is charged with having participated in the abuse of Serb prisoners in the Odzak and Bosanski Brod area of northern Bosnia from May to October 1992.
Dragan Pajic, son of Mirko, also testified at this hearing, saying he learned about his father’s detention only after leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“I was 14 years old at the time and it was a shock to learn about his detention. When mother returned from Bosnia to Serbia I learned about his death,” said Pajic, adding he was also told that Tolic was one of those responsible for his father’s death.
The witness said that he had been looking for information about his father from 2000 and that he sent data about this case many times to the Bosnian court and prosecution.
The trial continues on July 11.
