Rifle Pointed at Child’s Nape

Zorka Lesic said that she was detained in a school building in Odzak for one night on May 8, 1992 and that about 800 or 1,000 Serb men, women and children were there as well. She said that her older son was taken to the Strolit Factory, while her husband stayed in the school building.

“I went back home with my younger son. I was working something in the yard, when they set all the Lesics’ houses on fire. I ran away and hid in the field with my child,” the witness said, adding that, a few days later she was accommodated in Sreto Lesic’s house together with her son and a few other women.

She said that indictees Marijan Brnjic, the Glavas brothers and Martin Barukcic, whom she identified in the courtroom, came in front of that house one night after midnight, shouted and ordered them to come out. As she said, they were armed, uniformed and had caps with the letter ‘U’ on them.

“They opened fire in the air and lined us up in front of the house. We were shocked. Martin was holding a rifle to Ljubo’s nape. Ljubo, Jelena’s son, was 14. He said: ‘Look at this Chetnik’,” Lesic said, adding that they separated her from the rest of the group and her son, who was crying.

According to her testimony, the four indictees drove her by brown minivan, on which “fire horses” was written in white letters, to Mate Barbara’s house.

“This is where it happened. They entered the vehicle one by one,” the witness said.

As per a Defence’s proposal, the Chamber decided to exclude the public from the parts of the testimony referring to rape for the protection of the intimate and family life of the indictees.

The Prosecution of BiH charges Marijan Brnjic, Martin Barukcic, as well as Pavo and Ilija Glavas, former members of the 102nd Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, with having raped Serb women, beat, abused, humiliated and threatened them.

The indictment charges them in five counts with having brought victims from various locations to houses and other facilities in the Odzak area in the summer of 1992.

When the public was allowed to come back, the witness said that an unknown man raped her in the minivan on their way back.

Lesic said that she went to Jovanka Vojnovic’s house in Novi Grad with her son soon after that, adding that she saw Marijan Brnjic and other persons, whom she did not know, taking Vera Lesic and Suzana, whose last name she did not know, away.

“They set the house on fire after that,” the witness said, adding that she was exchanged around July 5, 1992 and that she then underwent an abortion in Brcko.

“I got rid of their consequences,” Lesic said.

During the cross-examination the witness said that she did not report the rape, because she was afraid, and that she was still afraid, but she decided to testify.

She said that she did not mention the indictees’ names in her previous statements because she did not believe that the trial would happen at all.

The trial is due to continue on January 27.