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Bosniak fighters Ekrem Ibracevic, Faruk Smajlovic and Sejdalija Covic have been charged with the torture and abuse of Serb civilians in Rapatnica from June to August 1992. Their crimes were allegedly committed on the premises of Rapatnica’s school building and football club.
Ibracevic was the former chief of military security with the municipal headquarters of the Territorial Defense in Srebrenica. Faruk Smajlovic and Sejdalija Covic were members of the military police.
Nebojsa Davidovic said that he and a few other men were detained on the premises of the Rapatnica football club. He said during his detention, he was taken out to be executed. Davidovic realized the execution was fake, set up with the aim of intimidating the detainees.
“They take you out and say, ‘your day of doom has arrived.’ They blindfold you. You hear, ‘ready, aim, fire!’ You hear gunshots…when they stopped, I realized that I wasn’t in pain in any part of my body…They don’t bring back the man they took before you, so you think he isn’t alive,” Davidovic said.
He said on the first day of his arrival in Rapatnica, men were mistreated and beaten.
“A man approached me and asked, ‘Why did you do this? You are young. You are attacking Bosnia.’ Then he punched me with his fist, making two of my teeth fall out,” Davidovic said.
He said detainee Stokan Markovic was beaten more brutally than anyone else on that occasion. He said soldiers knocked him down and hit him with “whatever they had on hand.”
“One of the brothers, the skinnier one I think, took cow dung and stuffed it into his mouth,” Davidovic said.
He said many soldiers were present when this took place, including brothers “Muce” (Faruk Smajlovic) and “Sejdo” (Sejdalija Covic), as well as the “captain” (Ekrem Ibracevic). He said remembered them because they called each other by those names.
Davidovic said the three of them were present at the following incidents: when the group of prisoners he arrived with were initially beaten, when detainees were taken out for a simulated execution and when detainees were questioned and beaten (Davidovic said he was once hit on the back during questioning).
“The three of them were present in 90 percent of the situations…I may have not suffered as much, because I was young…unlike Vasilije Jovic and Stokan Markovic, who were deformed due to their beatings,” Davidovic said.
The defense teams asked Davidovic why he failed to mention the captain or the fact that he lost two teeth in the statement he gave in 2009. Davidovic said the inspector who took his statement was “tiresome” and wanted to “get it done as soon as possible.”
Witness Radenko Mihajlovic, also a former detainee, was brought to a hall in Rapatnica which was used as a detention facility. He was detained there with a group of cousins and local residents of Brezje. Upon arrival he said he saw other detainees with bruises on their faces.
He said also remembered Faruk Smajlovic and Sejdalija Covic, who wore fingerless gloves. He said that Sejdalija Covic once hit his uncle and punched him on the head with his fist.
Both Davidovic and Mihajlovic were transferred to a prison in Tuzla after six or seven days. Other prisoners told them that they were burned with soldetrons (a welding tool, similar to a blowtorch), that they had salt put on their wounds and needles placed underneath their nails while they were in Rapatnica.
The trial will continue on April 21.
