Tortured with Electrical Shocks

Protected witness A-2, whom the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH, examined on June 24, said, responding to Defence’s questions, that he was connected to a phone and tortured by being subjected to electrical shocks, which made him “jump even a few metres up from the chair.”  

He said that his hearing was damaged due to the electrical shocks and confirmed that he had had minor hearing problems before that.  

When asked by the Defence of Miroslav Duka whether it was true that he was connected to a phone only twice, the witness said that it happened more than 100 times.  

A-2 said that Duka “was an accomplice, when war gas was thrown into the room known as an isolation cell”, in which he was held.     

Miroslav Duka, Goran Vujovic and Zeljko Ilic are on trial for having committed crimes in Bileca. According to the indictment, Vujovic was Chief of the Public Safety Station in Bileca, Duka was Commander of Police and Ilic was policeman.

Vujovic and Duka are charged with having enabled and organised the detention of Bosniak and Croat civilians in the Public Safety Station and Students’ Dormitory in Bileca, where they were killed, tortured and abused, while Ilic is charged with having participated in physical and mental abuse, torture and murders.

The witness said that, following his arrest, he was taken to a detention unit in the Police Station in Bileca, where he was dumped into a room “with 17 people covered with blood.”

When asked by the Defence of Goran Vujovic how many more premises there were, the witness said that Goran Vujovic would know best. As he said, 39 or 40 persons were brought to the room, which covered a surface of eight or nine square metres.

“We were next to each other. Everybody was bleeding. We watched each other. Each one was covered with blood,” the witness said, adding that, while he was in the Police Station, he was starving and that he only got a slice of bread during four or five days.  

A-2 said that they were taken from the Police Station to the Students’ Dormitory.  

“We were not transferred, but loaded as cattle. (…) Wooden bars were nailed across the windows, so I did not know whether it was day or night. I was put into an isolation cell. All nine of us had to turn around at the same time. There were nine people in each of the three isolation cells,” the witness said.

As he said, two or three Croats were held in the isolation cells, while all the others were Bosniaks.

The trial is due to continue on December 16.