Witnesses Describe Detainment and Killing of Civilians at Fundup Trial

Radoman Fundup, a former soldier with the Focanska Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been charged with the murder and abuse of civilians. The indictment alleges that he participated, in collaboration with two other persons, in the murder of two children and five persons, as well as the wounding of one woman.

Fundup is also charged with having abused three civilians, two of whom were children. The indictment further alleges that he and another person came to the village of Gornje Polje, where they lined civilians up and cocked their rifles at them, simulating their execution.

Kadir Dzelilovic said he went on a business trip to Croatia before the beginning of the war in 1992. He said his family stayed behind in their home in Cohodar Mahala, near Foca.

During his stay in Croatia, Dzelilovic found out that his father and brother were taken to the Penal and Correctional Facility in Foca and that his mother was killed at their home in Cohodar Mahala.

“According to my findings, after they took my father and brother to the facility, my mother, sister, and sister-in-law stayed in the house. My mother was killed there, my sister-in-law was wounded, and my sister managed to escape,” said Dzelilovic.

He said his sister and his Serb friends from Foca told him that the Fundups had killed his mother.

During cross-examination the defense asked Dzelilovic whether his friends told him that they personally witnessed his mother’s murder. Dzelilovic said he could not claim that.

Prosecution witness Ifeta Soro, who lived in Cohodar Mahala with her husband and three children, also testified at today’s hearing. She said her husband was taken, along with other male residents of the village, to the Foca correctional facility in April or May 1992. She has not heard anything about her husband’s fate since.

She said the women and children stayed behind in Cohodor Mahala.

She told the court that one evening she heard cries and saw a bright light emitted from her cousin Suljo Soro’s house, where her mother-in-law and several women with children were sheltered.

“I thought that one of the houses in that area was set on fire. When I went to the house on the following day, a neighbour told me that all the people who were in my cousin’s house were killed. All of them were women. Not a single man. My mother-in-law was one of them. I know that a boy aged six was there as well,” Soro said.

She said a dredger arrived in front of the mosque that evening. It transported all bodies to that location and buried them there.

Soro said on the following day she heard that Ifeta Merkez and her two children were killed as well.

Murat Borovina, Ifeta Merkez’s brother, was the third prosecution witness at this hearing.

Borovina said he heard about the death of his sister and her two children, aged ten and seven, while he was a refugee in Macedonia. He said their bodies were found in a mass grave after the war.

The trial will continue on April 10 with the examination of new prosecution witnesses.