Taking Sivac and Garibovic away

Testifying for the District Prosecution in Banja Luka, Hajrudin Sivac said that soldiers came to Sivac village, near Prijedor and told the male residents to come out from their houses.
 
“I recognised Nisevic among those soldiers. He was a very good friend of mine. When he saw me, he stopped in front of my house. We spoke for a few moments. After that the soldiers went to Mehmed’s house,” Hajrudin Sivac said.
 
According to his testimony, he saw the soldiers taking Suad Sivac, who was 19 at the time, and Garibovic away. The witness said that they neither mistreated nor beat them on that occasion, but they said they were taking them for an examination and that they would be released afterwards.
 
The District Prosecution in Banja Luka charges Goran Nisevic and Milenko Beric, who were armed with automatic rifles, with having come to Trnopolje, Prijedor municipality, on July 9, 1992 and, acting in collaboration with several other unidentified soldiers, taken a group of Bosniaks from their houses and escorted them towards the railway in Trnopolje.
 
The indictment alleges that Nisevic, Beric and the others killed Suad Sivac and Sulejman Garibovic. Their bodies have still not been found.
 
Second witness Senad Sivac said that he remembered June 9, 1992, when Suad Sivac was taken away.
 
“Nisevic and another soldier came by. They said that all men should come out of their houses and bring their personal identification cards. When he saw me, he said that I should not bring my card, because we knew each other. We spoke a little and had a cigarette together. He then moved on. I asked him what they were doing. He said that they were looking for extremists,” Senad said.
 
The witness said that, later on he saw that they were taking Suad away but he did not see Garibovic.
 
Sakib Garibovic, brother of killed Sulejman, said that his mother told him that the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, surrounded Suad Sivac’s house and took his brother away.
 
“When Sulejman heard that his father was killed, he went to Suad’s place in Sivac village. My mother told me that Goran Nisevic and a person nicknamed Cigo, a taxi driver from Omarska, took Suad and Sulejman away,” Sakib said.
 
When asked by Milan Romanic, Defence attorney of Beric, if he knew about another person nicknamed Cigo in Omarska, who too was a taxi driver, he answered negatively.
 
Witness Mile Cavic said that he lived in Cavici hamlet in Trnopolje during 1992. He explained that there were about 15 Serb houses in his hamlet, adding that their owners organised sentinel, because the hamlet was surrounded by villages inhabited by Bosniaks, who too kept watch.
 
“I was commander of those guards in Cavici. We had a couple of rifles. Those, who kept watch, used to carry them. We did not have military uniforms,” Cavic said.
 
When asked by attorney Romanic if he heard about Momcilo Radovanovic, also known as Cigo, the witness said that he had a group of soldiers, who were the leading force in Omarska.
 
The trial is due to continue on December 4.