Witness Recalls Beatings at the Silos Camp

Witness Risto Mijatovic said that, in late May or June 1992, Mirsad Sabic, accompanied by two other men, took him from his home to a shack in the village of Pazaric, near Sarajevo, where he was beaten up.

“Mirsad Sabic, Mujo Fatic and Avdo Mujan took me to the shack and began interrogating me. Then they started beating me. They hit me and I fainted. They hit me on my soles.,” Mijatovic said, showing scars on his head and hand caused by the beatings and cigarette burns.

The witness said that, after he had spent three days in the shack, Sabic, Fatic and Mujan took him to the Silos camp.

Mirsad Sabic, Mustafa Djelilovic, Fadil Covic, Nezir Kaziz, Becir Hujic, Halid Covic, Serif Mesanovic and Nermin Kalember are charged with crimes committed in the Krupa military barracks, the 9^th May school building and the Silos concentration camp.

The indictment alleges that the former representatives of civil, military and police authorities participated in a systematic joint criminal enterprise, within which they committed crimes against Serb civilians and prisoners of war, in the period from 1992 to 1996.

Mijatovic told the court that he was also beaten up during his detention in Silos, adding that the Silos prisoners were beaten up on the Ascention Day [Serbian religious holiday].

He said that he did not know who beat the detainees on that day, but he suspected that it was the same people who had beaten him up in the shack.

“While we were held in Silos, we slept on a dusty concrete floor. When we were given a slice of bread and a crumb fell down on the floor, we looked for it and ate it, although it was covered with dust. One slice of bread and five spoons of soup was all we got in one day,” Mijatovic said.

After about a month in the Silos camp, Mijatovic was taken by Sabic, Fatic and Mujan to the school building in Pazaric, where he saw Sabic several times, before being transferred to the Krupa barracks.

“I think that a man named Sera was the chief in Krupa. I was really sick, so they sometimes carried me in a blanket and put me on the concrete floor in front of our cell. One day as I was lying on the concrete floor, Sera came by. He looked at me and said: 'You’ll never leave this place',” Mijatovic said.

In December 1992 Mijatovic left the Krupa barracks as a part of a prisoner exchange. He said that he is still suffering the consequences of the beatings in the detention camps.

“I wake up in the middle of the night. I have nightmares about the three guys beating me. Those are severe traumas and deep wounds,” the witness said.

The next hearing is due to be held on June 28, when the defence will cross-examine Mijatovic.