|
|
“As I was getting off the bus, I heard an order being called out that we should flee across the fields, escape across the fields, run across the fields. So I managed to get a little away from the asphalt road, because the people who were first and stepped down from the bus first were right up by the asphalt, and then you get to the field and that’s where they were killed.” Suad Džafić, a Bosnian Muslim speaking about how Serb soldiers murdered Bosnian Muslims, including his father and two brothers, in the village of Nova Kasaba, near Bratunac in eastern Bosnia, on 21 May 1992. He testified on 26 and 27 June 2003 in the case against Slobodan Milošević and on 11 February 2004 in the case against Momčilo Krajišnik, a Bosnian Serb leader.
|
In May 1992 Suad Džafić was 25 years old, living in his home village Vitkovići in Bratunac municipality, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Two months earlier he had come back from Serbia, where he worked in the forestry industry, as he noticed that tension in Bosnia was increasing. In his statement to the Office of the Prosecutor and his testimony before the Tribunal, he revealed many details about the Serb takeover of Bratunac town and other villages in the municipality in April and May 1992.
Mr. Džafić said that on 16 April 1992 Serb forces entered Bratunac, having previously taken over the nearby town of Zvornik. In Bratunac, they created the new Serb Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), and fired all the Bosnian Muslims from their jobs. In the following days, Serb paramilitary units started moving into all the villages surrounding the town, attacking the village of Glogova on 9 May 1992, where they killed about 60 villagers, and the village of Krasno Polje on 10 May.
On the day of the attack on Krasno Polje, Mr. Džafić’s Serb neighbours advised him and his fellow villagers that they would be safer if they fled to the woods, which they did. The same night they went back to their houses, since their neighbours told them that the situation had calmed down. For the following seven days, Serb police patrolled the village, in order to keep the inhabitants inside it.
On 17 May 1992, the police chief came to the village and asked for all the weapons to be handed over within two hours. “If we wouldn’t have complied with that ultimatum our safety couldn’t be guaranteed anymore. To enforce that ultimatum he took away with him four villagers. They were my father Mehmed Džafić, my brother Hamed Džafić, Šahin Suljić and Ramiz Karić,” said Mr. Džafić. After being questioned in the police station in Bratunac, they returned safely to the village.
On the morning of 18 May 1992, armed Serb neighbours from the neighbouring town of Vitkovići, now in camouflage uniforms, surrounded the village, and told the inhabitants to gather in the streets. After 12pm, Suad Džafić and his fellow villagers were put onto two buses and transferred to Bratunac. “As they loaded us onto the buses, other soldiers started looting all the houses in the village,” said Mr. Džafić.
While they were waiting in Bratunac for the third bus to come, carrying people from the village of Krasno Polje, a Serb soldier called for Fadil Habibović, who was in the same bus as Mr. Džafić. “He was taken away and I’ve never seen him again,” Mr. Džafić recalled. He later heard that a driver from Vitkovići, called “Novo”, took Fadil Habibović to his house in Krasno Polje, and killed him there.
The three buses, now filled with Bosnian Muslims, and each carrying an armed guard, were taken to Vlasenica, also located in eastern Bosnian and Herzegovina. They parked in the bus station and were surrounded by a mixed group of soldiers in camouflage uniforms, equipped with full combat gear, automatic weapons and hand grenades. Mr. Džafić noticed that some of them had the insignia of Serb paramilitary units on their uniforms such as “Arkan’s Tigers” (referring to the unit commanded by ICTY accused Željko Raznatović aka “Arkan”), “White Eagles” and others.
All the men of military age, together with five minors, were escorted by the soldiers and taken to the MUP prison in Vlasenica, while 120 remained in the buses. For the next three days, from 18-21 May 1992, 32 adult men and five minors were detained there, all locked in the same cell, approximately three by five metres large. “It seemed to be a lifetime. We had been severely beaten during day and night time”, Mr. Džafić said. “They used every kind of things to hit us, such as batons, rifle butts and other hard stuffs. We also had not been provided with any water or food before the second day of detention”.
On the morning of 21 May 1992, the prisoners were taken out of the cell and put on a bus. Five minors were left behind. While they were waiting to leave Vlasenica, Mr. Džafić saw four cars with skull signs parking near the bus. As people in uniform were getting out of the cars, he recognised his neighbour from Vitkovići, Pero Mitrović. Mr. Džafić said that he learnt later that these soldiers were members of the Vukovar diversionary or the sabotage platoon.
All these vehicles, led by an armoured car, left in the direction of Bratunac. They stopped at a roadside pub, near the village of Milići, where soldiers had food and drinks. While the prisoners were waiting in the bus, Mr. Džafić heard a Serb policeman yell out: “Let me kill them all now. Don’t take them away.” Then he heard Pero Mitrović shout: “Don’t kill them ‘cause they are under our custody.”
After about 30 minutes, the convoy continued towards Bratunac. It stopped at the beginning of the village of Nova Kasaba. Soon after, a soldier called “Makedonac” (“Macedonian”) ordered the prisoners to get off the bus in groups of four or five. As the first group was disembarking, the soldiers started to shoot. In his statement Mr. Džafić described these executions: “The bus was parked on the asphalt road. There was one group of people standing by the back door to the bus. The others were in front of the bus. There was an APC [Armoured Personnel Carrier] in front of the bus, and it took part in the shooting. And as the people got off, they would pass across the fields and that’s when they shot, did the shooting.”
The soldiers kept shooting at every group of prisoners that was getting off the bus. Mr. Džafić was in the last group, along with his brother, his two cousins and another male relative; his father had been in a previous group. As they got off the bus, Mr. Džafić was hit by the gunfire, and fell on the ground. He was wounded in four parts of his body: his stomach, his hip and in two parts of his right leg.
Mr. Džafić recalled that, once the shooting was over, Pero Mitrović and “Makedonac” set out to look for survivors, shooting at all the people they came across who were still alive. “I was lying on the road, sure that I would have been the next to be finished with a pistol shot. I pretended to be dead,” Mr. Džafić said.
As Pero Mitrović and “Makedonac” were approaching Mr. Džafić, he heard them arguing about the place of the execution, with one stating that it should not have been done on a main road. They agreed to leave the site immediately.
As he was still lying on the ground, Mr. Džafić heard the vehicles leave. He got up and after walking for two hours, he managed to reach the Bosnian Muslim-controlled village of Čeliković, where he was treated.
The same night, after Mr. Džafić and two other survivors - Rahman Karić and Sado Muhić - told their stories, Bosnian Muslim soldiers went to the place of the execution. They managed to recover the bodies of 16 people out of the 29 killed. They were buried in a place called Kaldrmica. The remaining 13 bodies were later buried by the Serbs, in a location unknown at the time Mr. Džafić gave his statement to the Office of the Prosecutor.
In 1993, Mr. Džafić gave a statement in relation to these events to the Bosnian Agency for Investigation and Documentation (AID) in Tuzla. He also provided a list of 21 names of people who were killed in Nova Kasaba. The list included his father and two brothers. Around ninety percent of the people from the list were also his relatives and family. In his statement to the Office of the Prosecutor in 2000, Mr. Džafić said that Rahman Karić and Sado Muhić had not been seen since the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995.
Suad Džafić testified on 26 and 27 June 2003 in the case against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević. In this case, many victims’ testimonies were submitted in written form as an exhibit, and appeared before the Tribunal to answer questions from the accused or the court. Suad Džafić related these events to an investigator of the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 20 June 2000. He later testified on 11 February 2004 about the same events in the case against a member of Bosnian Serb leadership Momčilo Krajišnik. Slobodan Milošević, who was charged with crimes committed in Bratunac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, among other places, died in custody on 11 March 2006, and proceedings against him were terminated.
>> Read Suad Džafić’s full testimony on 26 June 2003 and 27 June 2003 and witness statement.