Bosnian Croat prisoners locked in a museum basement were physically and sexually assaulted, said a prosecution witness at a trial for war crimes in the town of Jablanica.
Witness Adem Halebic, who was a guard at the Battle of Neretva museum in Jablanica in the summer of 1993, said he saw once bruises on one of the prisoners, Miroslav Stipanovic.
“I asked Miro [Stipanovic] what happened. He told me [trial defendant] Nihad [Bojadzic] came by and punched him repeatedly,” said the witness.
He said that he also saw that another prisoner, Karlo Maric was beaten up, and that he told him that Bojadzic came by and “did this to him”.
Halebic said that members of the Bosnian Croat force, the Croatian Defence Council, were held in the basement of the museum.
Bojadzic’s lawyer asked the witness why he did not tell investigators from the Croatian Security and Information Agency about the alleged beatings after he was captured in October 1995. Halebic said he did not know.
Halebic said that he heard that defendant Bojadzic once came to the museum in a jeep and took a girl away with him.
“I heard she was raped,” Halebic said.
Bojadzic, a former deputy commander in the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar unit, is charged with the beating, sexual abuse and rape of Bosnian Croat prisoners in the museum.
Another witness at the hearing, Nusret Siric, a military policeman on guard duty at least once a week in the museum in 1993, said he once heard from a guard that a female prisoner was raped, but no one said whether Bojadzic was responsible.
The trial resumes on February 7.
Timeline of events in the case against 13 former Serb fighters charged with committing war crimes in the villages of Cuska, Zahac, Ljubenic and Pavlac in Kosovo in 1999.