At the trial for crimes in Kotor Varos, the witness of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) spoke about the attack on the village of Vecici, the murders of men, the abduction of women and children, and about leaving this area in 1992.
Protected witness S-11 said that after the attack, on July 12th, the army entered Vecici. She said that she hid in a house with more than 40 civilians until they were driven out, and the person they called Pop was told to set fire to the house.
S-11 said that they came to a warehouse where men were wounded, and whom she heard were killed. She stated that she personally saw when Ibrahim Pasic was slaughtered.
”I saw a stream of blood,” the witness recalled.
She added that they led the three women into a barn, which they set on fire and from which moans could be heard. She said that they were lined up in one place and that she thought she was grateful to God that they would be killed, but they were taken to Vrbanjci, while one man was killed along the way.
Moreover, she said that she saw a large number of uniformed faces congratulating and bragging to each other. In Vrbanjci, they were locked in a tavern, where Zupljanin appeared at the door.
Part of her testimony was closed to the public to protect privacy. After the public’s involvement, she testified about her return from the tavern, after more than two months, to Vecici.
She said that, due to the circumstances in which they lived, they decided to leave the area and left on November 2nd. She also stated that the men, about 180 of them, who went through the forest, including her husband, were taken to the school in Grabovica and killed.
Bosko Peulic, Slobodan Zupljanin, Manojlo Tepic, Janko Trivic, and Nedeljko Djekanovic, in their capacity as military and civilian leaders, were charged with persecution in the Kotor Varos area – murder, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and forced labor.
When asked by the Defense, the witness said that Zupljanin’s name was Slobodan, but that she did not know whether she said that in the investigation. In the courtroom, she pointed to the accused Zupljanin and two other people whom she believed were Zupljanin whom she had seen in Vrbanjci, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
