Witness Describes Prisoner Mistreatment in Potoci Detention Facility

“We were held in houses in the village of Meke. We felt like prisoners. One of the soldiers woke me up at three in the morning and took me out for questioning. I was pregnant and cried because my kids were left behind. He said he would hit me in the stomach if I didn’t stop crying. Curic came and he heard my cries, he returned me to my children. I call that saving someone,” state prosecution witness Ilka Kozulj said.

Kozulj said she knew Curic from before the war.

Kozulj said she and others were taken from Meke to Mostar. They spent a few days in Mostar before being detained at the Potoci elementary school.

“We were held in the gym. We lied on the floor…It was horrible. We couldn’t go out, there was a guard. Curic was always there,” Kozulj said. She said she didn’t have any problems with the guards at the school.

When asked if prisoners were forced to work, Kozulj said both men and women were ordered to do so.

Enes Curic, Ibrahim Demirovic, Mehmed Kaminic, Samir Kreso and Habib Copelj have been charged with participating in the detention of Croat civilians who were subjected to severe physical and mental mistreatment from June to December 1993 in Mostar.

Demirovic has also been charged with an incident of rape in Potoci.

The indictment also alleges that Kaminic hit a mentally ill person in the stomach in the Potoci school building prison.

Curic was a member of the 49th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army and the manager of a detention facility in a school building and other buildings in Potoci. Demirovic was the commander of the 47th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army. Kreso was the chief of a military medical unit of the Mountain Brigade that covered the area of Bijelo Polje. Copelj and Kaminic were members of the Bosnian Army.

The trial continues on July 8.