At the trial of Zdravko Samardzija for crimes against humanity in Kotor Varos in 1992 and 1993, a witness of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) said that during the attack of the Serbian army on his village, women were set on fire in a wooden barn, one of whom managed to escape with serious injuries.
Sead Ramic said that the war found him in his early twenties in his native village of Vecici near Kotor Varos, where, like other locals, he took on the role of keeping watch during the night as convoys and military vehicles passed by.
”I remember – the Military Police came on June 11th. It was Eid al-Adha and we were drinking coffee, when a neighbor came and said: ‘Kotor Varos has fallen’,” Ramic recalled the beginning of the attack on his village.
He said that the first attack on Vecici was on June 11th in the morning from three directions, during which several people were wounded and five of them died. Due to the inaccessibility of the hospital and doctors, the wounded were placed in a warehouse, the witness recalls, and medical assistance was provided by two girls who finished Medical High School.
Ramic recalls that the shelling of Vecici started a few days before the attack on the village and that afterward it continued every day, as a result of which around 15-20 houses were set on fire, and the citizens moved to other villages.
”Biba came to our street, I heard from her that when the Serbian army entered the village, they locked her, her mother, and another woman in a wooden barn and burned them alive,” said Ramic, adding that the wounded woman managed to escape and come to them, but after a few days, she died from her wounds.
Furthermore, he adds that on November 3rd, 1992, around 160 people from Vecici were captured and killed and that the remains of most of them have not been found to this day.
Another witness, Jovan Dragic, testified that he came to BiH from Croatia and accepted the offer to be in the Serbian army because of the salary they promised him, after which he was appointed to the Special Police Unit.
He said that he went to Kotor Varos on orders to clean up the village of Vecici, but that the first action was unsuccessful.
”The second time we came, I don’t remember exactly what time it was, some were in the front, we were protecting from the flank. There were wounded, and there were women and children. After searching the houses, we didn’t find anyone fit for the military, so we took the women and children and returned,” he stated.
When prosecutor Mersudin Pruzan asked why they took the women and children, he said that he did not know and that it was an order.
The witness said that, during the operation in the village, he did not see anyone dead or wounded, nor did he hear about the burning women in the barn.
Zdravko Samardzija was accused as a member of the command of the Special Militia Squad of the Security Service Center Banja Luka, of being part of a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was the permanent removal of the Bosniak and Croat population from the Kotor Varos area. He was charged with the persecution of the civilian population in 1992 and 1993 – illegal imprisonment, torture, murder, rape, deportation, and other inhuman acts, as well as the destruction of property and religious buildings.
Zeljko Lajsic, the third witness, said that in August 1991, he transferred from the Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs to the BiH Ministry of Internal Affairs, based in Banja Luka. He confirmed that there was a Special Squad and that the accused Samardzija was one of the members, stating that he was only a logistician.
”Zdravko Samardzija was there, but he was a logistician, not a commander. So he delivered all the necessary resources to us, we had everything that was assigned to us – ammunition, food, weapons,” said Lajsic.
He also said that he did not know what happened to Samardzija after the special unit was disbanded.
The trial will continue on September 26th, when three witnesses are scheduled to be heard, Detektor writes.
E.Dz.
