Witness Recalls Rapes in Vilina Vlas

“His face was painted in colours, so I could not see him well. That is why I cannot claim 100 per cent it was him, but when another soldier called him: ‘Oliver’, I had no doubts any more,” said protected witness OK14, adding that in the room in which she was raped there was another imprisoned woman.

Witness OK14 said that she knew Oliver Krsmanovic from before the war.

The witness said she was held prisoner in Vilina Vlas in May and June, 1992, where beside Krsmanovic she was raped by Zeljko Lelek, and Milan Lukic, who imprisoned her and brought her there.

“I have never seen Krsmanovic again after the rape. At the very beginning of the war, in April 1992, I met him on a street in Visegrad, where in passing I overheard him bragging to a younger, unknown man, that he raped a lot of Muslim women,” said OK14.

As former member of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), Krsmanovic is charged with taking part, together with Milan Lukic and others, in forced disappearances of the Bosniak population, murders and rapes on the territory of Visegrad.

Milan Lukic as the leader of the White Eagles paramilitary unit was sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to a life in prison for the crimes committed in Visegrad, while Zeljko Lelek has been sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment for the same crimes by the State Court in Sarajevo.

At Tuesday’s hearing Mevlida Dzaferovic also testified saying that defendant Krsmanovic broke into her home in May 1992, together with soldiers, and that he said he only came to see “if there was anything to take from the house”.

“They did not take anything from the house, but Krsmanovic said he would be back. After that day, we hid in the basement of the neighbour’s house and spent two months there," Dzaferovic testified. 

"One night Milan Lukic came when my sister-in-law Igmala was in the house, raped her and left in the morning. Several days later, Lukic came again, took Igmala and we never saw her again,” said Dzaferovic.

During cross-examination, Krsmanovic said that the witness was wrong, to which Dzaferovic replied she had known the accused very well before the war, because he was a school friend of her brother-in-law.

“You came to our house many times before the war. I know you well. I have not made a mistake. I know it was you, Oliver,” said the witness.

The trial is set to resume on August 28.