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Munib Becirovic said that he spoke to Pilav at the beginning of August 1993 and that Pilav described how he fled from the shooting at a landfill site in Prozor.
“I could hardly recognise him … he was swollen and sick … He said that he ran away from the shooting after Zeljko Jukic and Vinko Papak had taken him from the Secondary School Centre in Prozor to there. They told him to put his hands to his back. Somebody cocked a rifle after that. At that moment he jumped into a chasm,” Becirovic said.
When asked by Prosecutor Sanja Jukic whether he knew indictee Zeljko Jukic, he said that he did not know him during the war, but he met him at work in 1998.
Becirovic said that problems and setting houses on fire in Lug village, Prozor municipality, began in mid-June 1992, when Robert Maric was killed on the frontline. “Following the funeral, Vlado Maric began causing trouble. Several houses were set on fire,” Becirovic said.
Jukic, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, is charged with murders, abuse and robbing of civilians in Prozor in 1993. Jukic was sentenced, under a first instance verdict, to 13 years in prison, but the verdict was quashed and a retrial ordered.
Second State Prosecution witness Semsa Becirovic said that her husband was taken to the Secondary School Centre in Prozor in mid-July 1993 and that she had not seen him since.
“My brother Ibro Pilav was also taken to the Secondary School. When I visited my husband, witness S-7 told me that Zeljko Jukic had taken Ibro away the night before,” she said.
Becirovic said that Jukic mistreated her father Bajro Pilav as well, by “putting him on a leash like a dog and forcing him to bark.”
The trial is due to continue on January 20.
