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The verdict against them will be pronounced on Monday, December 8.
Nisevic and Beric are charged with having taken Suad Sivac and Sulejman Garibovic from Trnopolje and killed them on June 9, 1992. Their bodies have still not been found.
Nine Defence witnesses were examined and statements given by two witnesses, who were not able to appear in court, were read prior to the presentation of closing statement.
Witnesses Ljubomir, Mile and Rade Nisevic, indictee Nisevic’s cousins, told the Court that they organised a village guard system in order to guard their houses in a hamlet near Trnopolje.
“Nisevic participated in those guards. We were together every day. Most of us did not have military uniforms. I have also known Beric since he was a child. He too kept watch in his hamlet. In that period we did not leave out hamlet at all or mixed with guards from other hamlets,” Ljubomir Nisevic said.
He said that they organised guards in Nisevici hamlet as of May 24, 1992.
Witness Stevo Unijak said that Bosniaks began organizing village guards first.
“A military company passed through our hamlet Strpci one evening. I think that they came from Kozarac and that they were Muslims. We called them ‘Green Berets’. We spent the night in fear. Nobody dared to sleep,” Unijak said.
Dragoljub Kostic explained that they organised the village guards, because they were afraid for their own security, and that they had never captured anyone.
“A cleansing was conducted following an attack on Kozarac. The Army came to Bosniak houses and checked whether any extremists were still there,” Kostic said.
Ostoja Milutinovic recalled that unknown persons from Kozarac opened fire at a truck, which transported soldiers, and that several soldiers were killed on that occasion.
“The Prijedor Radio then broadcast a call to all Bosniaks in the region to hand over their weapons in order to calm the situation down. However, it did not happen, so the bombing of Trnopolje and Kozarac began,” Milutinovic said.
Brothers Zlatan and Izet Muranovic said that they knew Beric and that he was a good guy, who had never caused any trouble. They said that, while they were held in detention camps in the Prijedor surroundings, nobody had any bad words about him.
Attorney Milan Romanic read a statement, which Mirzet Karalic, who now lives in Germany and has not been able to appear in court to testify, gave to Prijedor police earlier.
Recalling the day, when Suad Sivac was taken away, the witness said that he saw a group of soldiers, among whom he recognised Goran Nisevic.
“I was about 200 metres away from them. Two guys on bicycles came by accidentally. They stopped them. When I saw that, I went back home. Later on I found out that they took Suad away,” the statement indicates.
A statement, which Jusuf Karalic gave to police before, was read at the hearing today as well. Karalic said that he heard that Beric and other soldiers took Suad Sivac away.
“One day he came in front of my house together with several soldiers by blue truck and told my family and me to get on, as they had to drive us to a detention camp,” Karalic said, adding that, when he got out of the detention camp, he saw that his house was pillaged. He said that his neighbours told him that Nisevic did that.
