Vogosca Serb Chief ‘Threatened to Spill Bosniak Blood’

Prosecution witness Eset Muracevic told the state court in Sarajevo on Monday that he was threatened by Tintor, who was president of the Crisis Committee in the Serb-led municipality of Vogosca at the time.

Muracevic, the former head of the local council in Svrake, a village in the Vogosca municipality, said that after the elections in 1992, tensions rose, the police were ethnically divided and barricades set up.

“When I went to one of the meetings with the representatives of the Serb authorities, I saw Jovan Tintor in a grey-olive uniform distributing soldiers around Svrake,” the witness said.

“He told me: ‘What are you doing here? Everything will be coloured red with Balijas’ [a derogatory term for Muslims] blood,” he added.

Muracevic said there was an attack on Svrake and Bosniaks received a message from Tintor, telling them to surrender. The witness was captured and taken to a detention facility called the ‘Bunker’ on May 4, 1992.

“Sometimes even up to 80 men, children and women would be in the small ‘Bunker’ space. We urinated and defecated in a bucket inside the building, which was particularly embarrassing for women,” he said.

The witness said that while being questioned, he saw a document issued by the Crisis Committee of Vogosca, indicating that all prisons were under its authority.

“Commander Jovan Tintor’s name was printed at the bottom of the document. It was signed by somebody else on his behalf,” Muracevic said.
When asked how he managed to see and read the document while being examined and beaten up, the witness said the room in which he was questioned was small.

The indictment charges Tintor with participating in a widespread and systematic attack against the non-Serb population in the Vogosca municipality from April 1992 to the end of July.

Also on Monday, at the trial for the murder of civilians kidnapped from a train in Strpci in the Rudo municipality in February 1993, a prosecution witness told the state court that he had been influenced to change his statement about the incident.

Witness Mico Jovicic said that after the investigation was opened, in March and April 2015 he had contacts with defendants Obrad Poluga and Boban Indjic, which he understood as an attempt to influence him to change his statement.

Jovicic, who was sentenced to five years in prison after having admitted guilt for participating in the Strpci crime, said Poluga had contacted him twice.

“He invited me to meet at the war veterans’ association building, as he works there. Boban Indjic was with him. They spoke about straightening out my first statement given to the Court. They advised me to straighten out my statement, to change it,” Jovicic recalled.

“Obrad and Boban invited me one more time. They spoke about straightening out my statement again,” he added.

Jovicic also said that his wife met Poluga once about getting assistance from the war veterans’ association, and was told: “Do you know what happens to traitors? Do you know one prisoner has been stabbed in Foca? He [Jovicic] should be careful about what he says.”

Indjic and Poluga are charged with kidnapping 20 civilians from a train in Strpci on February 27, 1993. The civilians were then killed in the Visegrad area.

Luka Dragicevic, Petko Indjiic, Novak Poluga, Dragan Sekaric, Oliver Krsmanovic, Radojica Ristic, Vuk Ratkovic and Miodrag Mitrasinovic are also on trial with them.

Jovicic was originally charged alongside them, but the case against him was separated from the others’ after he admitted guilt in November last year.
According to the charges, Dragicevic was commander of the Second Podrinjska Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, Indjic was commander of the Interventions Company of the brigade, while the other defendants were members of the Interventions Company or the First Company of the First Battalion of the brigade.drag