Brcko Serb Leader’s Trial Told How Conflict Erupted

Mustafa Ramic, the former president of the Brcko municipal assembly, told the state court on Tuesday as Djordje Ristanic’s trial opened that the first casualties of the conflict in the town were caused by an attacks on a bridge across the Sava river and the murder of members of the Bosniak-led Party for Democratic Action, SDA, in April 1992.

As the head of the wartime presidency in the Brcko municipality, Ristanic is accused of participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at persecuting Bosniak and Croat civilians from the area from April to December 1992.

Ramic told the court that in April that year, the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA set up machine-gun nests and heavy weapons in Brcko.

Before that, a JNA reservist soldier had killed “a member of the Croatian Defence Forces from Croatia”, he said.

He said that the Serb Democratic Party then held an assembly and declared the founding of a ‘Serb municipality of Brcko’ in part of the local area, appointing defendant Ristanic as its head.

Although the Bosniak-led SDA, of which witness Ramic was a member, found the idea unacceptable, he said that a meeting of Bosniak “intellectuals” was held, at which he argued that they should accept the proposal for the sake of peace.

He said that a municipal assembly session was held on April 27, at which participants accepted the proposal for territorial division in principle.

The details were supposed to be discussed at the beginning of May, but on the night of April 29-30, two explosions destroyed the bridge over the river Sava.

“The town was demolished, windows were broken, roofs fell down… I saw parts of human bodies,” Ramic said.

According to his estimate, between 100 and 150 people were on the bridge at the time of the blast. The total number of casualties has never been determined.

“All my hopes and the agreements were destroyed. It was clear everything was ruined,” he said.  

Ramic said he found out later on that a group of people from a military truck had captured a patrol on the bridge and that a minivan had brought the explosives.

He said meetings were held at the JNA military barracks that day and the day after, where commander Pavle Milinkovic told him this was “an attack by Ustasas [Croatian nationalists]”. The witness said that when he went to one of the two meetings, he saw Ristanic at the barracks.

As the head of the municipality, Ramic went to a television station with Milinkovic’s deputy Momcilo Petrovic in order to address the public.

While they were on air, a viewer from the Fourth of July district of Brcko called the station and told them that the army had opened fire on the neighbourhood.

“At that moment I realised the war had begun,” Ramic said.

When Petrovic went to make a phone call in order to check what was going on, Ramic managed to leave the building and flee to the village of Gornji Rahic outside Brcko.

Ramic said he spoke to Ristanic on the phone a day or two after having left town and asked him what the recently-declared Serb municipality was doing, and Ristanic responded by saying they were “not interested in your people, but our territory”.

The witness also said two SDA members were severely beaten up and then killed in April.

Responding to the defence’s question, Ramic said Territorial Defence units consisting of several hundred of people were also established on territory “which we controlled” following an order from the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from April 15.

The trial will continue on April 12.