1 Monday, 27 July 1998
2 --- Upon commencing at 10.10
3 (Open session)
4 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Good morning ladies and
5 gentlemen. May we have appearances, please?
6 MR. COWLES: Good morning, Your Honours. My
7 name is Jim Cowles and I'm here representing the
8 Prosecution along with Mr. George Huber. Thank you.
9 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: May we have appearances
10 for the Defence, please.
11 MS. RESIDOVIC: Your Honour, my name is Edina
12 Residovic and I appear on behalf of Delalic, and the
13 co-counsel is Mr. O'Sullivan from Canada. Thank you.
14 MR. KUZMANOVIC: Good morning, Your Honours,
15 Tomisalv Kuzmanovic on behalf of Mr. Mucic. Mr. Olujic
16 will be here later today. Thank you.
17 MR. KARABDIC: Good morning, Your Honours, my
18 name is Salih Karabdic. I appear on behalf of Hazim
19 Delic and the co-counsel is Mr. Tom Moran, attorney
20 from Houston, Texas.
21 MS. McMURREY: Good morning, Your Honours,
22 I'm Cynthia McMurrey, I represent Esad Landzo, along
23 with Nancy Boler and Mr. Calvin Saunders.
24 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Thank you very much.
25 Mrs. McMurrey, we're expecting you to lead your next
1 witness.
2 MS. McMURREY: Yes, Your Honour, I have an
3 announcement to make that the witness is not available
4 until 2.30 this afternoon. I'm asking that the Court
5 please show tolerance and indulgence for this problem
6 and we'd like to begin presenting evidence at 2.30 this
7 afternoon, if the Court could please allow the delay.
8 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Is it still one of the
9 witnesses you're expecting, or another strange
10 witness?
11 MS. McMURREY: No, it's not a strange
12 witness, Your Honour.
13 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Are you now telling the
14 Trial Chamber you cannot lead evidence until 2.30
15 p.m.?
16 MS. McMURREY: Yes, Your Honour, that's what
17 I'm informing the Court of.
18 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: I hope that is a firm
19 time when we can expect you to lead your witness, not
20 when we come at that time we have another story. I
21 don't call it a fairy story, because I've not even
22 heard the story. So, we hope at 2.30 you will start
23 with your witness.
24 MS. McMURREY: Your Honour, I will begin
25 testimony at 2.30, exactly as I have represented to the
1 Court.
2 JUDGE JAN: Don't you think we have wasted
3 enough time already?
4 MS. McMURREY: Your Honour --
5 JUDGE JAN: We've given indulgence after
6 indulgence.
7 MS. McMURREY: Yes, you have been very
8 tolerant and very indulgent through the whole Defence
9 case, I believe, and through the Prosecution case, as
10 far as that goes, the Court has shown great
11 understanding for the problems associated with the
12 witnesses we have tried to bring here. And you're
13 absolutely right, Judge Jan, you have all been very
14 tolerant about this. I was just asking the Court to
15 allow just two and a half more hours of court time and
16 then we will be wrapping up our defence.
17 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Okay. We will rise
18 again and with the concession of other counsel, we'll
19 rise and come back at 2.30.
20 MS. McMURREY: Thank you very much.
21 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Trial Chamber will now
22 rise.
23 --- Recess taken at 10.15 a.m.
24
25
1
2 --- On resuming at 2.35 p.m.
3 MR. MORAN: For the record, Mr. Karabdic is
4 ill this afternoon and he has asked me to carry on in
5 his absence.
6 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Thank you very much for
7 giving us that information. Now, Mrs. McMurrey. Let's
8 hear you.
9 MS. McMURREY: Yes, Your Honours, the Defence
10 of Esad Landzo calls Esad Landzo to the stand.
11 MR. COWLES: May the Prosecution be heard,
12 Your Honour?
13 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Yes.
14 MR. COWLES: Your Honour, we object to this.
15 We were not informed that the defendant would testify.
16 We've never received any written notice. I even asked
17 the Defence counsel this morning who would be the
18 witness this afternoon and they refused to inform the
19 Prosecution. I realise we can probably not prevent him
20 from testifying. However, since we've not had the
21 seven days' notice as required and as we fully complied
22 with, we have not been adequately informed. We will,
23 therefore, if Your Honours allow the defendant to
24 testify, we would then request a brief recess or a
25 short break following his testimony before we commence
1 cross-examination, Your Honours.
2 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: At least that's the
3 first things that lead you, whether it will be
4 necessary to cross-examine. You have any necessity to
5 cross-examine, then the Trial Chamber will decide.
6 MR. COWLES: Yes, thank you. Excuse me, Your
7 Honour?
8 JUDGE JAN: An accused is always a competent
9 witness at his own trial.
10 MR. COWLES: I fully understand that.
11 However, in compliance with the Trial Chamber's
12 rulings, we have never been informed that he would be
13 called.
14 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: I understand that, thank
15 you. Please let him come to the stand.
16 (The witness entered)
17 THE WITNESS: ESAD LANDZO.
18 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will
19 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
20 truth.
21 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Please sit down. You
22 may proceed, Mrs. McMurrey.
23 MS. McMURREY: Thank you, Your Honours.
24 Examined by Ms. McMurrey:
25 Q. Good afternoon. Could you state your full
1 name for the record, please.
2 A. My name is Landzo, Esad.
3 Q. And I know, Mr. Landzo, that you have learned
4 to speak English, but you prefer to testify in your
5 native language today; is that correct?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Now, can you tell the Court the reason that
8 you have made this last minute decision to testify in
9 this Court?
10 A. The reason is that all my witnesses and
11 witnesses in fact that were supposed to submit their
12 testimonies, refused for a reason unknown to me to come
13 here and to tell their truth. This is why I decided to
14 tell you what happened.
15 Q. Were they witnesses who had agreed to come at
16 one time, but changed their mind right before they came
17 to The Hague; is that what you're saying?
18 A. Yes, this is what they told to my Defence
19 counsels who had talked to them some 7 -- 14 days ago.
20 They had said that they would come, that they were
21 willing to come, but at the last minute they stated
22 that they would not like to testify.
23 Q. Now, did you want to testify before the Trial
24 Chamber before?
25 A. Yes. At the very beginning when I arrived in
1 The Hague, I asked for Mr. Brackovic, my first Defence
2 counsel to allow me to tell the truth because I do not
3 have a habit of lie, but he had told me for a reason
4 unknown to me that that was not a good idea, that I
5 should not do it and he advised me that I should use
6 other modes to deny all the counts of the indictment.
7 Q. And did you make an attempt to talk to the
8 Prosecutor even as recently as last summer?
9 A. In the course of the time when Mr. Ackerman
10 was my lead Defence counsel, I asked him to establish a
11 contact with a Prosecutor to be able to talk to him,
12 but only Mrs. McMurrey talked to him without his
13 consent, so I couldn't talk to the Prosecutor.
14 Q. Did you have any concerns for your family
15 before you were testifying here?
16 A. Yes, very much and I would like to thank
17 their honours for the patience they have exuded and
18 manifested while allowing my sister to come here and
19 allowing her to testify.
20 Q. Now, I want to go on to the evidence that
21 we'd like to present before the Court.
22 Can you give a description of what you were
23 like as a young boy before you started primary school?
24 A. Well, generally, before the war, I was a
25 peaceful person. I was a person that didn't like to be
1 in company, in a large group. I tended to spend most
2 of my time on my own and with animals.
3 Q. I am talking about as a young boy, before you
4 started primary school, what kind of child were you?
5 A. Well, generally, I was a sickly child. I had
6 a congenital bronchitis that later on developed into
7 asthma. As far as I can recall and as far as I was
8 told by my mother, I was a very sick person. I tended
9 to play on my own instead of playing with my brothers.
10 I was different from the others, as far as I can recall
11 and as far as my mother told me, I was always different
12 from the rest of the children. I was sickly, I would
13 very often go to the hospital because of my breathing
14 difficulties. And I would avoid, for reasons that I do
15 not know, a large group of children. I would not play
16 with my brothers as often as I had played on my own.
17 Q. Would you consider yourself as a shy child?
18 A. Yes, very. Even at school I was such and
19 many of my teachers would ask me why I was such a
20 person.
21 Q. And can you tell the Court about one time
22 when you were a young boy and you had an incident with
23 some goats, what happened?
24 A. Yes. At that time, my parents lived in a
25 suburban area of Konjic and a neighbour of mine had
1 young goats that I was very much afraid of. One day,
2 they playing probably would run after me. I was afraid
3 that they would push me with their horns, therefore,
4 and I fell and they would really push me over and roll
5 me over. For months after that I would twitch with my
6 eyes and the doctor that examined me had told my
7 parents that they would be, they would have to be kind
8 of nice to me so that I would lose this fear. And the
9 twitching of the eyes had discontinued afterwards.
10 Q. Now, what age were you when you started
11 primary school?
12 A. Seven.
13 Q. Were you the same size as the other children
14 in school?
15 A. Not really. I was one of the smallest in my
16 class.
17 Q. And did you have very many friends in primary
18 school?
19 A. Except a relative of mine who I would hang
20 around with mostly, even though I spent four years with
21 the same pupils in my class, they remained sort of
22 strangers from me, so I would either be on my own or I
23 would spend my time with this relative of mine.
24 Q. Did you have a talent that you didn't know
25 about until you were in primary school?
1 A. In the 4th grade of the primary school, I
2 entered the painting club and at that time I sort of
3 discovered my talent for drawing and painting.
4 Q. And did you have a special teacher that
5 encouraged you in that field?
6 A. Yes, Vera Bratic was the teacher. She was my
7 teacher of arts from the 5th grade to the 8th grade of
8 the primary school.
9 Q. What ethnic background was she?
10 A. To tell you the truth, I have no idea at that
11 time. But, later, when the war started, I learned that
12 she was a Serb and even her husband was a member of the
13 command that I had belonged of. He was, in fact, one
14 of the territory defence command.
15 Q. So he was a member of the TO?
16 A. Yes, at the beginning.
17 Q. Did you consider Ms. Bratic one of your
18 closest friends?
19 A. Yes, yes. The only person at school and
20 outside the school, apart from my parents that I had
21 trusted, that I could confide in. She would always
22 listen to me. She would always encourage me to go on
23 with my painting, to learn and to get good grades at
24 school.
25 Q. And did the other children ask you to draw
1 pictures for them?
2 A. Yes, at school and on the alley where I
3 lived, everywhere, except the smaller children who want
4 wanted me to draw pictures on their T-shirts.
5 Q. And did you do that?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Were you ever asked by your classmates to
8 join them to do things?
9 A. The only subject where they asked me to join,
10 to do something for them, was the arts class because I
11 was one of the best among all students at school. So
12 this is when they communicated with me, otherwise, they
13 would distance themselves from me. They probably
14 consider me to be different and not belonging, but as
15 far as painting and drawing is concerned, here it was a
16 different story.
17 Q. Did you come from a poor family, a
18 middle-class family, a wealthy family? What kind of
19 family did you come from?
20 A. I came from a family of, a large family of
21 several members, seven members. I couldn't say we were
22 a rich family. My father was the only parent working.
23 So somewhere around the lower middle-class family. We
24 were not really poor, we could get along.
25 Q. Were there seven people living in a one
1 bedroom apartment?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And when your grandmother was living with
4 you, how many people lived in the apartment?
5 A. Eight.
6 Q. Did you have one friend named Valentin?
7 A. Yes, that was at the time from the 5th to the
8 8th grade of the primary school and we continued being
9 friends in the secondary school all the way until the
10 beginning of the war.
11 Q. Would you say that you were close to your
12 parents during that time of your life?
13 MR. COWLES: Your Honour, I would like to
14 interpose an objection, at this point to the relevancy
15 of this line of questioning.
16 MS. McMURREY: Your Honours, if I might
17 respond. It all adds up and goes to the mental state
18 and the personality disorders that we claim in the
19 defence of diminished mental responsibility and that's
20 the relevance.
21 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: You can carry on.
22 MS. McMURREY: Thank you.
23 Q. Were you close to your parents in primary
24 school?
25 A. Throughout this time, particularly close to
1 my mother because she would spend all her time with us,
2 with children, and I would -- she would help me with my
3 homework during the primary school. She would check on
4 my grades. She was in charge of everything while my
5 father was working and he would spend his free time
6 resting.
7 Q. Let's go to secondary school. Before you
8 went to secondary school, did you apply to be accepted
9 to a different secondary school?
10 A. Yes. Upon graduation from the primary school
11 and upon proposal, or rather, suggestion by my former
12 teacher of the primary school, Vera Bratic, I applied
13 to the secondary art school in Sarajevo. I passed the
14 entrance exam, but because of the lack of financial
15 funds, since my father was the only breadwinner and
16 there were four children to be schooled, I had to enter
17 the Konjic Secondary School. I decided to enroll in
18 that school and to graduate from there just to get the
19 diploma, otherwise, I was not really interested in the
20 type of school. I couldn't go to the school of my
21 choice, so I choose this one.
22 Q. And so when you were denied the ability to go
23 to art school, how did you feel? How did that affect
24 you?
25 A. Angry, particularly angry with my father
1 because I blamed him, although I shouldn't have, but I
2 blamed him for not allowing me to do it. Actually, I
3 withdrew even more within myself, avoiding contact with
4 other children, talking to other children about this.
5 I particularly was reluctant to talk to my classmates
6 who enrolled in military school. I just didn't want to
7 talk about something that was an indication of the
8 future, of my future. So, in a way, I was ashamed and
9 I blamed my father, although, subsequently, I realised
10 that there was no reason for blaming him.
11 Q. So you were forced to go to a secondary
12 school in Konjic. And, what was that specialisation?
13 A. I wasn't forced, I could just not continue
14 education, but I wanted to continue with education to
15 finish a secondary school and to, perhaps, through my
16 own financial resources, finance myself through an art
17 school afterwards, so I enrolled in Konjic, the
18 secondary school, woodworking secondary school.
19 Q. And how did that woodworking secondary school
20 affect your asthma?
21 A. Somewhere from the second grade of this
22 secondary school we had practical exercises where we
23 had to go to a workshop in a company, processing wood.
24 My father was employed there too. So we would get into
25 contact with machines. We would work on the wood.
1 There was lots of sawdust because, obviously, we would
2 be working on woods and very often I had to stay at
3 home because of the breathing problems. And, at the
4 end, I just passed the test without following the
5 classes on a regular basis.
6 Q. So you graduated from secondary school?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Now, after you graduated from secondary
9 school, what happened to you immediately after that?
10 Did you -- could you find a job then?
11 A. That was an unfortunate time, not only for
12 me, but for the whole country, the former Yugoslavia,
13 which was in a crisis as far as money was concerned.
14 So it was very difficult at that time to get a job,
15 particularly for us, the younger people, even those who
16 were employed in factories would not -- they would not
17 get their salaries on a regular basis. So I would just
18 go to the student service. I would work for a day or
19 two, for an hour or two, to earn my pocket money. It
20 was really very difficult and I couldn't really get a
21 job at that time. I couldn't work over a longer period
22 of time, of course, because of my health problems, but
23 I worked as much as I could to help out.
24 Q. Did you end up hanging out with your brother
25 and his friends during that time?
1 A. No. I started hanging around with them after
2 the completion of the second grade of the secondary
3 school. My brother left for the military service at
4 that time and in a way I started hanging around this
5 company. These had, namely, been people that I knew a
6 little better than the others. Although some of them
7 were older. Some of them were two, three, five years
8 older them me. I would hang around with this group of
9 people. Well, maybe I could have found better company,
10 but I had always been afraid of new friends, new
11 friendships, of new people, so I preferred this
12 company. Well, I just knew them and I would hang
13 around with them because these were the friends of my
14 brothers.
15 Q. Well, did these friends of your brothers take
16 advantage of you in a way any time you had spending
17 money?
18 A. Well, now I can understand this, but at that
19 time I couldn't. For example, when, sometimes, I would
20 get some pocket money from my father or I would earn
21 some money on my own, I would buy alcohol for them. I
22 would buy drinks and then when I was hanging around,
23 they would send me to fetch something for them, go
24 there, bring us that. Go there, fetch this, because I
25 was the youngest and whatever they needed they would
1 just send me to fetch it.
2 Q. And did you do whatever they asked you to do
3 to try and win approval in that group?
4 A. Yes. It would happen that, for example, I
5 would go to a store to fetch drinks. I would not find
6 it there and I would have to go to another store, to
7 ten stores sometimes because I wasn't allowed to get
8 back without the drink. At that time, I thought I had
9 to do it for them. Now I see that.
10 Q. Talking about the alcohol and pills, I want
11 to jump ahead a little bit. In 1996, you told some
12 health experts, mental health experts about alcohol and
13 pills, why did you tell that story then?
14 A. Upon the suggestion of Mr. Brackovic, the
15 then Defence counsel of mine, he asked me, actually he
16 insisted, that I tell the story, that I took alcohol
17 and pills. Because, for him, that was a way of
18 defending me, claiming that I was beyond self-control.
19 I didn't know what I was really doing. I don't know
20 anything about these legal matters, but that was the
21 basis of his defence. And having followed his
22 suggestion, I made this testimony and I had repeated
23 this testimony to a number of doctors and experts who
24 examined me, even though this is not true.
25 Q. I want to move on to a person who lived in
1 your building. Can you tell us about a man named Ibo
2 or Ibro and how you felt about him?
3 A. Hamid Peliba (phoen) was my neighbour for
4 practically 18 years. He lived the floor above ours.
5 I knew him for 18 years. When I was a small child, he
6 was a good man, not only to me, but to all the children
7 on the alley. He would tend to protect us from certain
8 acts, particularly when my mother started baby-sitting
9 for his son, Arman. My mother told him that she would
10 not allow me to hang around with my brothers' friends
11 any more because they were drinking, taking pills.
12 And, in a way, he wanted to protect me. When he would
13 come across me, together with these youngsters, he
14 would smack me and he immediately sent me home. He
15 would check whether I arrived home. So he tried to
16 bring me away from this company, from these so-called
17 friends.
18 Q. And how did you feel about Ibro? Did you
19 care about him?
20 A. Yes, very much. I highly respected him as an
21 elderly person. A person I knew for 18 years, from a
22 neighbour of mine. And he had many nice gestures
23 towards me. And no reason to hate anyone if he does
24 good to you. And I liked him as a neighbour, as a
25 person who protected me against bad influence and as a
1 neighbour, as an older person.
2 Q. Now, in early 1991, what happened to the
3 fingers of your right hand?
4 A. I don't know why I became quarrelling with my
5 father, but that was in 1991, when I couldn't attend
6 the art school. And after this impossibility of
7 attending the school, I was to -- I blamed everything,
8 my father for everything. And then we quarrelled, the
9 two of us. And simply, I became nervous and I grabbed
10 something I found in a cupboard, a knife. I really
11 don't know why I grabbed that knife. And I hit against
12 this cupboard and on that occasion I slipped and I cut
13 four fingers.
14 Q. But you never had any intention of using that
15 knife on your father, did you?
16 A. No. No, no.
17 Q. And when you cut your fingers, what was the
18 result of that injury?
19 A. The 5th has been cut down to the bones of the
20 5th finger. I could see the tendons and the bones.
21 The second and the third fingers were cut less deeply.
22 And the others, that one was really very severely cut.
23 Q. Did you end up in the hospital at that time?
24 A. Yes, immediately a neighbour, a Serb, a
25 Serbian neighbour took me to the hospital with her car,
1 where they bandaged it and told me to contact Dr.
2 Buturovic the next morning who would operate on my
3 fingers. That is, in fact, what I did the next
4 morning. My elder brother accompanied me to the
5 hospital the next morning.
6 Q. And was Dr. Buturovic able to repair your
7 tendons in your fingers?
8 A. I don't know whether he succeeded, but I know
9 what he did to me. Through the 4th and the 5th finger,
10 he pulled a thread through it, with which I would then
11 do exercises and the 4th and the 5th today are bent and
12 stiff, even the third one is damaged. I really don't
13 know whether it's due to the lack of a professional
14 approach of his or maybe I didn't do enough of
15 exercises or I was supposed to be treated further. But
16 I am handicapped in the second right hand.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
1 Q. Could you hold your hand up so the Trial
2 Chamber can see how it's positioned now?
3 A. (Indicating).
4 Q. And is that the way your hand has been since
5 1991?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Did you miss school because of this injury?
8 A. Yes, I was still going to school at the time,
9 and after that, after the operation I spent five days
10 in the hospital. After that I was absent from school
11 for some time, and I had to make up and take additional
12 tests in order to pass that grade.
13 I was also, did not have to attend gym
14 classes. Sometimes I did attend them, but I had pain,
15 and then the teacher would let me go to the hospital
16 and get a pain killer injection.
17 Q. This hand injury, did you still graduate from
18 high school with it, I mean from secondary school?
19 A. Yes. Although, gym and for the professional
20 subjects I received just passing marks in order to be
21 able to graduate, but physically I couldn't take the
22 tests for these two subjects. I couldn't create a
23 piece, work a piece of wood on a machine, and I
24 couldn't do gym. So I just received passing marks in
25 these two subjects, otherwise I had average marks and
1 in order not to fail they gave me passing marks.
2 That was after my injury, of course.
3 Q. With this deformity in your hand, did it
4 embarrass you afterwards?
5 A. Yes, up until the beginning of the war I
6 always shook hands with my left hand. And many asked
7 why I was shaking hands with my left hand, or why did I
8 hold my right hand in my pocket. And I always had it
9 in wintertime wrapped up. And I always shook hands
10 with the left, many didn't know why. Many people who
11 know me a long time didn't know about this injury. I
12 tried to conceal that. I was a bit ashamed. Everybody
13 was normal except me.
14 Q. So, when you graduated from high school and
15 you couldn't find a job then, how were you feeling
16 emotionally at that time?
17 A. Well, emotionally I felt very poorly. Not
18 only emotionally, if you don't have a future and you're
19 young, you've finished school and you see no future in
20 it at all, then you have no will to live, not even for
21 the next day, not to speak of the next year. It seemed
22 as if all my ships had sunk.
23 That wasn't only my case, but also for many
24 of my generation, because it's a period when you should
25 be creating your own future and there were no
1 possibilities of that.
2 Q. Just in a few words, looking back on that
3 period in 1991, '92, can you explain what kind of
4 personality you had before the war in Croatia and
5 Konjic, if you can come up with words to describe it?
6 A. I describe psychologically, or personality?
7 Q. Personality.
8 A. Well, it, maybe it would be a question which
9 ought to be put to somebody else, but I'll try to
10 explain. I always wished to satisfy others,
11 particularly satisfy the older people. And I liked
12 playing with children, with younger people. I played
13 with animals.
14 So, as I can say for myself, as far as I can
15 say, I was a model for younger children, a model for
16 younger ones. That was before the war, of course.
17 Q. Now, in March did you receive a notice to do
18 your JNA service sometime in early 1991?
19 A. I don't remember the month. I remember
20 receiving the call up papers that I must contact the
21 office in Mostar and not in Konjic, because the JNA
22 collected all the communal, the municipal documentation
23 for the younger generations. I received the call up
24 papers, and the Muslims and Croats, it was in their
25 interest, it wasn't in their interest to fight on that
1 side within the JNA. The JNA was fighting in Croatia
2 at the time.
3 Q. Did your father tell you not to follow up
4 with the JNA service?
5 A. Yes, my father and many of my acquaintances
6 who received the call up papers also turned down, and
7 it was on the advice of my father, mostly at his advice
8 I turned that down.
9 Q. And what did he recommend that you do?
10 A. To hide. He actually suggested to me to hide
11 with my uncle, so at his place some 30 kilometres away
12 from Konjic. And there was always the possibility to
13 hide there should the military police show up, because
14 in Konjic you would have MP patrols on a daily basis
15 and they would try to hunt down the conscripts, and
16 should they find you they would, of course, bring you
17 in.
18 Q. Would you be arrested if you didn't fulfil
19 your JNA service?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And so, what did you do as a result of that?
22 When you said you went into hiding, where did you go?
23 A. I really couldn't say that I was hiding. I
24 had some friends from the school, Cipetic was the
25 surname, and I worked with him at Miro's. We knew each
1 other a bit better, and he proposed, he told me that he
2 has a brother in Rijeka in Croatia and that we could
3 move there because Rijeka is very far from the front
4 lines in Croatia. And with the help of that brother we
5 could find a job and after that, that we could move
6 on.
7 We decided to go there. And I told my
8 parents that I would be visiting my grandparents for 20
9 or 30 days and that I would be back and after this
10 trouble is over.
11 Q. And was this in April or May of 1991?
12 A. Possibly, I know it was the beginning of
13 summer. I remember some very warm days. It was very,
14 very hot. It must have been that period, but I cannot
15 tell you exactly. I know it was the beginning of the
16 warm season, and the area of Herzegovina, these warm
17 periods begin quite early. Not like in Bosnia, you
18 have two regions in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Herzegovina was
19 always warmer than Bosnia and the warm days began
20 sooner in Herzegovina than Bosnia, that was that
21 period.
22 Q. So, when you left Konjic when your friend
23 Cipeta where did you go and what happened then?
24 A. The first time we talked about it he told me
25 he knows of a man who will be, who goes to Croatia
1 regularly, and that his brother would pay him when we,
2 once we arrived Rijeka for the trip. And we left
3 Konjic at dusk.
4 And then we moved through Jablanica, it was
5 already dark. And then we moved on to Mecandum (Phoen)
6 Road, we couldn't continue along the asphalt road to
7 Mostar because the JNA was present there, and they were
8 arresting the young people who were at the military
9 age.
10 So, we went along, I didn't know exactly
11 where we were going, and I didn't know exactly which
12 area this was.
13 Q. So, where did you end up?
14 A. Around midnight we stopped in a village, and
15 since this was a pickup van, and as far as I could see
16 from the lights, there were stone houses, I believed we
17 were either in Dalmatia or Herzegovina, because only in
18 these areas do you have such stone houses. Here we
19 stopped. The driver took us to the home owner, and he
20 told us to sleep over there, that this home owner would
21 then see to it that we continued our trip.
22 Q. When you say the driver, are you talking
23 about your friend?
24 A. No, no, the person who drove us from Konjic
25 to this village. I don't know, I didn't know this
1 person. They had the licence plates from Konjic, but I
2 don't know whether the man was from Konjic. It was the
3 first and the last time I saw the man who drove us.
4 Q. Was he a friend of your friend Cipeta?
5 A. I don't know. Cipetic told me that he knows
6 somebody who could take us, but I don't know whether
7 they were friends, because they didn't talk between
8 each other while we were travelling. I don't know
9 whether they were friends.
10 Q. Did you stay in this stranger's home that
11 evening in this village?
12 A. Yes, we were offered dinner and we slept
13 there, and at his advice, he took us, we saw that this
14 was either Dalmatia or Herzegovina, because these were
15 all stone houses and it was a stony area, very stony,
16 very -- and we believed it was either Herzegovina or
17 Dalmatia, he took us to the other part of the village
18 and a long house, like.
19 Q. Are you talking about that night? Did you
20 sleep there and did you get up the next day and that's
21 when he took you to another part of the village?
22 A. Yes, that was in the morning. After sleeping
23 the next morning he took us to this long house, and we
24 were, while we were entering we saw some uniformed men
25 in black uniforms, and when we entered that building,
1 he brought us to some rooms like classrooms.
2 We entered and there was a man sitting there,
3 an officer, a person in a uniform. He didn't introduce
4 himself. We told him our names, he offered us a seat,
5 he asked us who we are, where we're going, the basic
6 information.
7 After that, when we told him, he offered us
8 something like forms to fill in with our names,
9 surnames, dates of birth, whether we served the JNA or
10 not, and when we said no, we didn't, and that we were
11 fleeing from that service and that we don't want to
12 take part in the armed forces, he said in a rather
13 unkind tone, "Well, you cannot go there prior to
14 getting your training."
15 So, we had really no choice. We couldn't go
16 there where we intended, and we couldn't go back,
17 because we had no transportation. So we had to stay in
18 that village and go through that form of training.
19 Q. When you say you couldn't go there, they said
20 that you couldn't go to Croatia without participating
21 in training first?
22 A. Yes, that was one. And we didn't know the
23 place, we didn't know where we were. We didn't know
24 where to go. We practically had no choice.
25 There where we were, we had to stay, because
1 you didn't know what you could expect behind the next
2 curve, whether the JNA, an armed unit. So, that was
3 it.
4 Q. When you stayed there, did they take you to
5 some kind of barracks and give you a place to sleep?
6 Or what happened next?
7 A. We slept in that building where they had
8 their offices. We had a room where we slept that,
9 myself, Cipeta, and we found some other five, six young
10 men. And from their stories we heard they were from
11 central Bosnia, that they wanted to go to Croatia, that
12 they were from central Bosnia, and we spent there some
13 15, 20 days. And we were trained to use our weapons,
14 infantry weapons.
15 Q. I was going to ask you what kind of training
16 you received, and were there many soldiers there, or a
17 few soldiers there? How many people were there at this
18 training facility?
19 A. I don't know whether this was a training
20 centre, but they had, their unit had a temporary base.
21 It was the house, a unit, had a temporary base. And
22 they were fighting somewhere in Croatia near Cazin
23 (Phoen) Zadar and there they had come to this area for
24 a rest. I understood that the Croatian border was
25 quite near; but otherwise Herzegovina was always a safe
1 haven for those who were not former Yugoslavia and for
2 all anti-Communists.
3 Q. When you say HOS and you talk about black
4 uniforms, are those different from HVO and the regular
5 Croatian uniforms?
6 A. Yes, these were black uniforms, completely
7 black. But you had also representatives from the
8 HVO from the Bosnian army who had later on black
9 uniforms; but they wore exclusively black uniforms,
10 they were called the Black Shirts.
11 Q. In early 1991, or April or May of 1991, were
12 these considered paramilitary groups, or regular army
13 at that time?
14 A. Well, it depends on the views of the Serbs.
15 For example, even the regulars of the Croatian army
16 were considered paramilitary; while Croatia, after its
17 independence, considered the JNA paramilitary.
18 And thus, also the HVO was considered at a
19 certain time as paramilitary. A general of the house
20 was in fact killed by a member of the HVO in 1992.
21 Q. Well, can you go on and describe the training
22 that you received at this military camp?
23 A. The first 15, 20 days we went through the
24 normal training, we were given some old uniforms of
25 different colours, M-48, old rifles that we used to
1 learn how to shoot, to put the rifles together, to take
2 apart.
3 Later on we, for some five, six days, went to
4 the political courses, as they called it. We were
5 brought to a room that resembled a classroom, we were
6 sitting in a circle and they would bring some civilians
7 in. We were told that they are Serbs, that they had
8 participated in the battles. There were also women,
9 there were uniformed men. And they showed us, using
10 them, how to do certain things.
11 They would bring these people in and the
12 trainer would come from the back to demonstrate to us
13 how to, in fact, kill somebody from behind, like a
14 sentry guard, using a knife. And we would have to sit
15 around and observe this demonstration.
16 Later we were told to hold these individuals,
17 you know, they were drunk. They would bring a person
18 in, we would have to hold these individuals, and they
19 will stab these individuals with a metal object.
20 Q. When you say these individuals, was it one
21 person, two persons, three persons? Did they do them
22 all at one time, did they do them individually?
23 A. No, there were three, four of them who would
24 lecture us, who would provide the so-called lectures.
25 Two were practically showing us how to do it while the
1 others would show us TV tapes, photographs of burned
2 down villages, of killed women and children, telling us
3 that this happened to the Croatians in Croatia and this
4 would also happen to the Bosnians in Bosnia, unless we
5 would get ready on time.
6 They called themselves Chetniks, and they
7 said Chetniks are ready to start the march, just like
8 in 1941 to slaughter the Muslims, and particularly the
9 Croats.
10 So, these videotapes and photographs would be
11 shown to us.
12 Q. When you talk about these people appeared
13 drunk, were they drunk or were they drugged by someone
14 or something?
15 A. Once or twice they were drunk. When they
16 would demonstrate to us how to use a knife, they were
17 drunk, indeed, once or twice. On other occasions with
18 others, I don't know, I couldn't notice whether they
19 were drunk. Maybe they were under the influence of
20 drugs or something. But I don't know that.
21 They looked normal, they moved in a normal
22 manner. I couldn't notice it. But on these two
23 occasions, they were indeed drunk.
24 Q. When you say they were drunk, are you talking
25 about the soldiers training you were drunk or the
1 subjects that they brought in were drunk?
2 A. The two trainers who were demonstrating,
3 these two soldiers that would demonstrate how to do it,
4 they were drunk. Not the person that was brought in,
5 but rather those individuals who were demonstrating to
6 us how to do it, they were drunk, the soldiers.
7 Q. Now, when you talk about this demonstration,
8 was this an actual training for you that you had to
9 participate in, or was it something that you merely
10 were supposed to watch?
11 A. First we watched and then on one occasion
12 when they were using a metal saw, cutting off one
13 person's fingers, I had to hold this person, he was
14 kneeling down, his head was put on a chair, we had to
15 hold his hands on his back so he couldn't get up while
16 they were doing it.
17 Q. And how many days did have you to be
18 subjected to this kind of training?
19 A. Five, six, maybe a day, give and take a day,
20 but somewhere around five, six days.
21 Q. And how did you feel at that time? What
22 happened to you then?
23 A. I saw my grandmother die, but that was of
24 natural death and that was the only person in my life
25 that I saw dead. Now, you come to a place where you
1 see people dying of force, use of force and not natural
2 death, you really are shocked. We couldn't sleep. We
3 would ask a doctor to give us sleeping pills. There
4 were many psychological problems. Whenever you would
5 close your eyes, the pictures from the past day would
6 come back to you. You would get up during the night,
7 you would walk around, you would have one pill, this
8 wouldn't help, and then you would get another pill, but
9 you had to take the pills in order to fall asleep.
10 Q. Were you and your friend Cipeta, were you
11 afraid at that point?
12 A. Of course. For example, they would come in
13 drunk, and you would know. Later we were told who
14 these people were, and when you walk up and down the
15 room, you don't know whether they will turn the rifle
16 at you and shoot, because they would shoot up in the
17 air, they would shoot around, you have come to this
18 place and you didn't know what could happen, and it
19 could very well happen that the next day I would be
20 taken into that room and used for demonstration, you
21 couldn't go anywhere, you had no choice, had you to
22 stay there. And simply we really didn't feel very
23 safe. I didn't feel safe. I don't know what the
24 others felt.
25 Q. How old were you and Cipeta at this time in
1 April, May of 1991?
2 A. Around 18, I think. Around 18 years, both of
3 us.
4 Q. And when did you turn 18?
5 A. In March, 3rd of March.
6 Q. So you could say you were barely 18 then?
7 A. Yes, yes.
8 Q. Now, how did you, how were you able to leave
9 this training facility?
10 A. After 25, 30 days, at most, that was the
11 period, 25 to 30 days, we were called up to go back to
12 the office to the commander who would congratulate us
13 on having completed the training, telling us that we
14 would be able to go to Croatia, but not where we wanted
15 to go, but to the military units in Croatia, where the
16 HOS or some other, we were told that we would have to
17 join the military units, or to go back home. This was
18 the choice we were given, both me and Cipeta opted for
19 return to home, because we didn't want to go to any
20 military forces. We would have joined the JNA had we
21 wanted to serve in the army, where we perhaps would
22 have or wouldn't have gone through such horrors, taking
23 into account what the JNA was doing in Croatia at that
24 time.
25 Q. So when you decided that you both wanted to
1 go home, did you turn in your uniform and your gun
2 then?
3 A. I never had -- a pistol, I had a gun, yes, I
4 turned it in, and a convoy of some ten trucks, I
5 assumed that these were trucks that were, that had
6 brought in weapons, well, they put us on one of these
7 trucks, took us to Jablanica and from Jablanica we were
8 then transferred today Konjic. Because these trucks
9 then continued from Jablanica towards Prozor or some
10 other place. We just used them to get to Jablanica and
11 then we would continue to Konjic.
12 Q. These trucks, were they HVO trucks?
13 A. I don't know. These were civilian trucks,
14 not military trucks. They were actually wooden trucks
15 belonging to a company. We didn't really sit next to
16 the drivers. We didn't ask the drivers a lot. I was
17 not really interested in these details, I just wanted
18 to get home.
19 Q. And when you got home, what happened then?
20 What did you do when you got home to Konjic?
21 A. Before leaving Cipeta was working for Elmir
22 Hadzialic, for Miro, everybody called him Miro. And
23 upon our return, I spent a few days at home walking
24 around the town, not knowing what to do. I felt the
25 need to tell my story to somebody, but I was afraid
1 that people would consider me crazy, because at that
2 time the war hadn't started, and should I start telling
3 somebody the story, they would consider me crazy, this
4 was not possible, this was unfeasable for that time.
5 So I would spend a few days in the town and then Cipeta
6 called me to help him to do something at Miro's, which
7 I did, and then I stayed working for Miro until the
8 outbreak of the war. That was about, well, I worked
9 for Miro somewhere for ten, eleven months, something
10 like that.
11 Q. Would that have been possibly in the month of
12 June or July that you started working for Miro? When
13 would that be, 1991?
14 A. Possibly at the end of June, the end of June
15 that I started. Or perhaps the beginning of July. I
16 really don't know. I don't know exactly, but I know it
17 was summer, the children would go and swim, but I had
18 to go and work. I worked with Miro.
19 Q. Now, had you worked for Miro briefly before
20 you and Cipeta left Konjic, or had you never worked for
21 him before?
22 A. When I came back, that was the first time I
23 started working for Miro. Upon my return, when Cipeta
24 asked me to help him to do something for Miro, then I
25 stayed and continued working for Miro upon Cipeta's
1 recommendation. He recommended me to Miro and Miro
2 accepted.
3 Q. And what was your working arrangement with
4 Miro? What did you do and how were you compensated?
5 A. I did everything he asked me to do, and since
6 this was a very difficult period of time, there were
7 certain vouchers used, and not money, real money, so,
8 vouchers, could be used only to buy in certain shops.
9 I decided not to use these vouchers, but to accept food
10 and clothes as compensation. I would take these home
11 for my parents for my brothers. So, it was not
12 compensation in money, but in kind.
13 Q. And what kind of work did you do for Miro
14 exactly?
15 A. Everything he asked me to do. That was
16 either working in a shop as a shop assistant. In a
17 warehouse, checking the goods, keeping records of
18 everything that was stored in the warehouse. Sometimes
19 I would go together with Miro to fetch goods to other
20 parts of the town. Cipeta would go with him to distant
21 places such as Sarajevo, Zagreb, et cetera. I would
22 sometimes go with Miro also to Zenica to Tuzla. I
23 would load and unload goods. I would work in Miro's
24 father's house. When I finished my work with Miro, if
25 his father needed anything, I would go and help him 24
1 hours a day for a week or two weeks. I would not even
2 go home to sleep. I would stay there. I would work as
3 a night guard. I would walk around and in front of the
4 shop watching the goods because goods had to be left in
5 front of the store. There was no room in the
6 warehouse, so I would spend nights outside.
7 Q. Where would you sleep when you stayed on the
8 property?
9 A. In Miro's office. Me and Cipeta, we would
10 sometimes sleep together or in turns. If Cipeta had to
11 go home, he would go home, I would stay. Where I would
12 go home, Cipeta would stay. But, basically, we mainly
13 slept together. Because sometimes in the morning at
14 5.00 a.m. the truck would arrive, everything had to be
15 ready for transportation. So we had to be there round
16 the clock, available all the time.
17 Q. When you say you loaded and unloaded, did
18 Cipeta help you? Did you ever unload anything very
19 heavy by yourself?
20 A. Cipeta and me, we unloaded small trucks, a
21 truck of 5 to 6 tons capacity. When larger trucks
22 would an arrive, we would ask people to help us and we
23 would pay them to help us with unloading. We would
24 have five, six sometimes ten people when two trucks
25 would arrive at a time, that would work. And my job
1 primarily was to push the goods towards the truck. Not
2 load or unload, push the goods, so that the person who
3 would load or unload on the truck would do it. And I
4 would also help Cipeta with the stock taking of the
5 goods that arrived due to my injuries, Cipeta was
6 familiar with, he was sort of a boss to me. He was
7 older than me, so I followed Miro's orders and then
8 Cipeta's.
9 Q. What was your relationship with Miro. Did
10 you have a good relationship with him?
11 A. Yes. He called Cipeta and me brothers, not
12 workers, brothers. And we also called him "brother".
13 He was more of a friend than a boss. Everything we
14 asked him he did for us. Everything he asked from us,
15 we would do. So it was really genuine friendship. It
16 was a friendly relationship and not one of boss and an
17 employee.
18 Q. And would you say that you did things up and
19 above the call of duty? I mean, besides your job
20 description, did you do other things for Miro too?
21 A. Well, you see, I -- my working time was from
22 7.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. After 8.00 p.m., I could say,
23 sorry, my time is up, but, of course, I worked for
24 him. Sometimes a truck would come after midnight and
25 we would have to take care of it, unloading. So that
1 was outside my working hours, but I did it to indeed
2 follow his request, not his order or instruction, but
3 his request. For me, I had no limited working hours.
4 Q. Did you do things for him at his home also,
5 not on the business premises?
6 A. Yes, yes. When his father would have lumber
7 to be brought into his house, I would go and do it. I
8 wasn't supposed to do that, but I did it. I wasn't
9 supposed to go to the restaurant and bring goods to him
10 to clean his house, to take the garbage out. He asked
11 me to do it and I did it. Actually, I was supposed to
12 officially work in the shop and not in the restaurant
13 or with Miro's father, but I did everything he asked me
14 to. Not just me, Cipeta did the same.
15 Q. Now, can you tell us where the name Zenga
16 came from? What does that mean?
17 A. At the beginning I didn't know it, but Zenga
18 is an abbreviation of a Zbor Narodne Garde. These were
19 the first military units that were defending Croatia's
20 independence against the JNA aggression. And Cipeta
21 would start using Zenga, this nickname, when referring
22 to me. Even Miro used this nickname not being aware of
23 what it stood for. It was a joke between Cipeta and
24 myself and people took it up and everybody started
25 calling me Zenga. And now about 80 per cent of the
1 people in my town know me through my nickname Zenga and
2 not my real name, particularly the younger generation.
3 Q. So did Cipeta begin calling you that name
4 because of your experience in Western Herzegovina?
5 A. Yes, yes. I started calling him Houseman and
6 he started calling me Zenga. His nickname, however,
7 didn't stick to him, but mine did. First the waiters
8 in the restaurant would start calling me Zenga and, you
9 know, when waiters start calling you with this
10 nickname, the guests would and the nickname would just
11 spread around.
12 Q. Now I want to go to the beginning of the war
13 in Konjic. Were you working for Miro during that
14 time?
15 A. Yes. I worked for Miro up until the
16 beginning of June, 1992, when the war already broke
17 out. Throughout that period I was working for Miro and
18 the first I heard the first grenades, I felt the first
19 shelling. The shells fell on the Ministry of Interior
20 in the area where the office stood, as well as the
21 restaurant, the shop, Miro's shop. The shelling
22 began. We experienced it. We felt the air pressure
23 and we fell. This was a densely built up area. We
24 felt this air pressure. I fell along a wall and Cipeta
25 fell in a garden. The other time we were in the
1 cellar, Miro's cellar of the shop where we hid and
2 later on shelling occurred again.
3 Q. Well, in the beginning of the war, were there
4 refugees coming into Konjic at that time?
5 A. Yes. I am not sure, but I believe that Miro
6 and his restaurant organised food free of charge for
7 refugees. I remember they'd come and eat there. I
8 don't know whether they had to pay. And Cipeta and I,
9 we had to work extra long hours. We had to get
10 additional food supplies. And even the first armed
11 groups in the city were offered food free of charge in
12 that restaurant.
13 Q. Now, in April and May of 1992, were these
14 refugees pouring in from Eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina?
15 A. I believe that the first refugees were coming
16 from Eastern Herzegovina, Nevesinje, the neighbouring
17 Municipality from Konjic, Nevesinje, Gacko and after
18 that from East Bosnia, from Foca and then from the
19 Konjic area, from villages that were burned down by
20 Serbs. So you had also these refugees coming in.
21 Quite a number. They were housed in some collective
22 centres in the town.
23 Q. And when these refugees came into Konjic,
24 what kind of stories did they bring to the residents of
25 the Konjic Municipality?
1 A. I often heard stories. Mainly, when they'd
2 come to Miro's restaurant, these were women with
3 children. It's -- that they told us that the men were
4 immediately killed on the spot. That women were often
5 raped; girls, 15, 16-years-old, so you heard these
6 stories. I heard that day in and day out. And also,
7 the waiters would begin to talk to them, who these
8 people are. They would ask where they come from. Then
9 Cipeta and I would be helping there and we would be
10 listening to these stories.
11 And, in the city, I could see them coming.
12 You could see groups of refugees coming in, carrying
13 their belongings in plastic bags, so you have these
14 pictures and situations you could see.
15 Q. And these tales of horrors that these
16 refugees brought to Konjic, what impact did that have
17 on the people of Konjic, on you and your family?
18 A. As an example, I will tell you a situation.
19 On the other side of the road of my ex-former school,
20 there were three national parties. I had history
21 classes in 1990 about the cases of the Second World
22 War. There was near the school, there was a cafe where
23 Serbs would congregate. And I could hear during
24 history classes, we could hear that they were singing
25 Chetnik songs and also wearing such insignia. They
1 were shooting in the air and so on while we were
2 listening to history classes and lessons and the pupils
3 were afraid. And once the refugees were coming in, we
4 expected that Konjic would face the same fate. We
5 expected such a fate for Konjic also. Thank god this
6 didn't happen.
7 Q. Well, you're talking about right next to your
8 secondary school, you heard Chetnik songs. Exactly
9 what does that mean? Because a lot of people don't
10 know that the background of Chetnik songs versus the
11 Ustasha, et cetera, in World War II, what did that mean
12 to you sitting in a history class?
13 A. Well, I don't know the text of these songs.
14 I never knew these songs. But, later on, I have seen
15 and read these texts. And these songs sing about
16 killing and slaughter. They say, who says that Serbia
17 is small? It's not small. It's fought three times and
18 if need be, it will fight again. So really these songs
19 are an invitation to fight. People were afraid to
20 sleep at home in their respective homes. We set up
21 guards in front of the houses. We were afraid people
22 would come and kill, kill our women and there was a lot
23 of fear, fear among refugees, fear amongst us.
24 Q. I want to go back to your history class and
25 these Chetnik songs. That happened in early of 1991,
1 before you went to work for Miro, before you got your
2 JNA notice? Is that when this occurred?
3 A. While I was still going to school, the moment
4 the national parties won the elections and that
5 occasion, then there was more freedom for those
6 nationalistic-oriented individuals. And some of these
7 people wore openly - carried weapons, pistols, even
8 rifles. And so we had Serbs. There were about half
9 Serbs and it was difficult to control them. For
10 example, in the evening, you come home, you hear in the
11 evening, shooting from restaurants, bombs were thrown.
12 And the police couldn't control that. And what the
13 police did do, then the party leaderships tried to
14 resolve that in another way and these people were
15 released the next morning.
16 Q. Did the first shelling of Konjic actually
17 begin sometime in May? When was that in 1992?
18 A. I don't know exactly. But I know that the
19 first shells fell, the cemetery is Muslim and the
20 Catholic cemetery. I know that they wanted to shoot at
21 the office of the Ministry of the Interior. But it's a
22 densely built up area where some 50 per cent of the
23 population is Muslim. And the first shells fell into
24 the Muslim cemetery and the Catholic one. I remember
25 that, but I don't know exactly the date, beginning of
1 May, probably, but I cannot say precisely.
2 Q. Now, after the shelling started, were you
3 still working for Miro in May of 1992?
4 A. Yes, yes, up until the month of June. But
5 the shelling was going on, heavy shelling was going on
6 even prior to my leaving Miro. I worked for Miro, I
7 knew that barracks in Ljuta were occupied. This was
8 all happening. I heard about that. I heard that
9 Bradina was liberated. That the barracks in Ljuta were
10 occupied and so on. I heard all these stories from
11 people who were coming to lunch at Miro's restaurant.
12 And, all the time, I was working for Miro.
13 Q. In the beginning, the first resistance was
14 formed in Miro's restaurant, with who? Who helped form
15 the first resistance? And when was that?
16 A. I knew Asaf and some other -- I knew some
17 other people from Prkanj, people who would be meeting
18 at night in Miro's restaurant. I wasn't personally in
19 the restaurant, Cipeta and myself, we would be in
20 guarding, standing guard in front of the restaurant in
21 order to be able to see if anybody was coming. But I
22 didn't know most of these people. I saw them in
23 uniforms and with weapons at night. But, in daytime,
24 they weren't in uniforms, but only at night they'd
25 organise themselves in that fashion.
1 Q. By Asaf, do you refer to Asaf Jusufovic who
2 came here to testify?
3 A. Yes, yes, I have known him a long, long
4 time. He had a small dog that was following him
5 everywhere. That's why I knew the man. We knew him as
6 Asaf, but I didn't know the sir name. I knew him as
7 Asaf and I knew his brother, Ahmet Aziz.
8 Q. Would it be safe to say that a lot of
9 military action was beginning to take place in the
10 Konjic area in May of 1992?
11 A. Yes, it was the period when I was listening
12 that activities were going on in Donje Selo. And I
13 heard about the barracks being occupied. I even
14 believe that a person from Prkanj was severely injured
15 when fighting in the area of Prkanj.
16 Q. With all of this action, military action and
17 planning and resistance being organised, during that
18 time, did you feel left out?
19 A. Yes, absolutely. As a young person, I am
20 sure that also many other young people wanted to
21 contribute to the defence of our country. It was our
22 duty as the inhabitant citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
23 We didn't want our mothers and sisters to happen what
24 happened to these refugees. And Miro told me to sign
25 up to the TO, Territorial Defence, which had its
1 headquarters in the Ministry of Interior. They didn't
2 want to accept me because they said I was too young.
3 That was one of their commanders who said it. He told
4 me, kid, what are you doing here? Get out. I wanted
5 to sign up for the service and I was excluded. Later
6 on, I tried to sign up again and later on I did at the
7 beginning of June.
8 MS. McMURREY: Your Honour --
9 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: I think we'll have to
10 break here and reassemble at 4.30.
11 MS. McMURREY: Thank you.
12 --- Recess taken at 4.00 p.m.
13 --- On resuming at 4.34.
14 THE REGISTRAR: I remind you, sir, that you
15 are still under oath.
16 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: You may proceed, Ms.
17 McHenry -- Ms. McMurrey.
18 MS. McMURREY: But Ms. McHenry is back.
19 Thank you very much.
20 Q. Mr. Landzo, we had just, I think, gotten up
21 to where you were about to join the TO. Can you tell
22 me the circumstances of how you were finally able to
23 join the Territorial Defence?
24 A. In the beginning of June I was still working
25 for Miro. I was at his place, the place where his
1 father lived, but his father and mother already were
2 evacuated. So, I helped Miro with all the housework
3 and everything he needed.
4 Once I went shopping and I met a friend, a
5 friend of mine, and he was in uniform and bearing arms,
6 had arms. And he said he had signed up for the TO the
7 next day, the next day they would be leaving for some
8 place.
9 Then I went back to Miro's and I informed him
10 that I would like to sign up. But he insisted that I
11 stay. He told me, you're too young, this isn't a war
12 for you, you're too young for that, it's for nobody, no
13 wise person. But it was stronger than me. And it's
14 the only time that I refused what he wanted from me. I
15 went to sign up on the right side of the Neretva River
16 where my parents lived, and that is where I signed up.
17 And some two or three days later I was sent to
18 Celebici.
19 Q. And when you say you signed up for the
20 Territorial Defence, what was the status of your father
21 and your two brothers at that point, or three brothers?
22 A. My father was involved from the beginning, he
23 was the street guard with my brother and then he signed
24 up for the TO. And my father also told me that it
25 would be wise to join, because I was, it would be my
1 duty. And in my understanding, I thought I really had
2 to join in, and that's what I did, with the advice of
3 my father, advice of my friends.
4 But Miro was against it. But I'm sorry I
5 didn't listen to him on that occasion. I'm sorry that
6 was my biggest mistake for not listening to him on that
7 occasion. Soon after that he left as a refugee, and
8 certainly it would have been better for me to listen to
9 him than it turned out, as I didn't listen to him.
10 Q. And when you joined the TO, I think you said
11 that was the first part of June sometime, when was it,
12 exactly, that you were sent to Celebici, if you
13 remember?
14 A. I believe it was somewhere on the 15th, or
15 17th of June that I was sent to Celebici.
16 Q. And did you go to Celebici with another group
17 of soldiers?
18 A. Yes, a full bus load of us, I don't know
19 whether 30 or 40 people, but the bus was full of
20 soldiers. A bus of a medium size, there were people
21 from different units, but all under the command of the
22 right side of the bank of Neretva. Some of them I did
23 know and others I didn't. There were some people from
24 my neighbourhood.
25 Q. When you say under the control of the right
1 side of the Neretva River, would that have been Captain
2 Kazazic?
3 A. I don't know what rank he had at that time,
4 but we called him commander, a commander of the right
5 bank, but I really don't know his rank at the time.
6 Q. When you were sent to Celebici, what were you
7 told before you went to Celebici? What were you
8 expecting?
9 A. My first superior commander, I believe a
10 Croat, I don't remember his name, but he was from my
11 neighbourhood. He told me and all of us would be going
12 to Celebici in order to guard a military facility
13 because in that facility we would be setting up a
14 training camp for the young soldiers, and that after
15 that we would return to Konjic.
16 But we didn't have an clue that it, there was
17 a prison for the rebellious Serbs. I thought I would
18 be guarding a military facility where young soldiers
19 would undergo their training.
20 Q. And how long were you in Celebici before you
21 realised they were holding detainees there?
22 A. I saw that the second day after coming, but I
23 found out that the first day when I came, I found out
24 that it was a prison, a camp. Maybe a year or a month,
25 an hour or two after coming, and I saw them personally,
1 the next day.
2 Q. Well, when you were stationed at Celebici,
3 what was your task? What were your duties, as the
4 young guards, or as the young soldiers who just arrived
5 in Celebici?
6 A. I was only a guard and to obey orders, to
7 guard, and nothing more.
8 Q. And were you given your duties at that point,
9 or did you go through some kind of, some kind of
10 training or some kind of indoctrination into Celebici
11 when you first arrived?
12 A. No. When we were leaving from Konjic by bus,
13 we arrived to the barracks of Celebici, we entered the
14 gates, and the bus stopped, we stopped at the gate, we
15 went out and we were told to line up into lines.
16 After that, Pavo Mucic arrived from the
17 command headquarters, he introduced himself, he chose
18 20 soldiers in full uniform with arms, real soldiers,
19 and to the rest he told to mount the bus and go back
20 from where they came from.
21 After that we were told where we would, our
22 living quarters would be; that was the half warehouse,
23 half where we would be sleeping. And after half an
24 hour's time or maybe an hour after leaving our things
25 Pavo called us out in the field. We sat down on the
1 grass, he chose Sejo Mustafic to be the commander of
2 the guards, we turned to him, if we need anything for
3 any explanation he explained our duties and our
4 obligations as guards and what is to be done.
5 Q. Now, can you stand up and point on the model
6 in front of you where the bus stopped, where the young
7 soldiers were lined up, and then once half were chosen
8 where they were told to sleep?
9 A. The bus stopped here (indicating). The bus
10 stopped here (indicating). Here we lined up.
11 INTERPRETER: I'm sorry, we cannot hear him
12 at this point.
13 A. Then Mr. Mucic came to the two lines. After
14 that we were sent to the building D, where would be our
15 living quarters. Then we congregated in front of that
16 building, and Mr. Mucic explained our duties or
17 obligations, and he also said that, who the commander
18 of the guards would be.
19 Q. And what were your duties and obligations
20 that were explained to you?
21 A. That we come here to be guards, and to carry
22 out all the tasks without any resistance. And he told
23 us it's not to think, but to do and to execute what is
24 being ordered. And that is something which was
25 repeated many times.
1 If we tried to ask something, it's not, we
2 were told, it's not up to you to think, but it's up to
3 you to do and to work.
4 We were told that the detainees were the
5 Chetniks who were taken in prison from Donje Selo from
6 Bradina, that we must be very careful in our contacts
7 with them, that they could take our weapons, they might
8 shoot a guard or all guards, that there can - nobody
9 can enter the barracks, the camp without permission.
10 These were the general type of information
11 which we received, and that weren't to ask and also
12 that we are to execute orders.
13 Q. Now, these young guards that were now
14 assigned these guard duties to, who were explained to
15 you were dangerous detainees, had these young guards
16 had military experience before?
17 We know you hadn't, but had the other young
18 guards had military experience before, either?
19 A. We, well, some 25 of us remained, and I would
20 say maybe six or seven adults, as I believe had served
21 their military service in the JNA. Others were all
22 young people from my neighbourhood and the town, maybe a
23 year older or a year younger than I was. So, mainly
24 younger people.
25 And I really don't know why they chose us.
1 Why they chose these very young people. I believe that
2 they should have chosen more experienced people, older
3 people, people who know something of life, and not
4 young people who have no experience of life. This is
5 what I say now, when I think of it in, as a mature
6 person.
7 Q. So, when you first got there, the second day
8 were you assigned any specific duty?
9 A. Yes, I was assigned to be a guard. I believe
10 that Mustafic Sejo determined which guard - where we
11 would be guarding. The gates there are three guard
12 posts, at the hangar. There is a number of posts,
13 guard posts, or we were sent in patrol along the entire
14 perimeter, within the wired perimeter.
15 There were also dogs there which remained
16 still from the JNA, and we continued to feed these
17 dogs. We did everything that was needed and what was
18 requested. The control and guarding of the entire
19 perimeter and over the various points in the camp.
20 Q. Over the time that you were there, were you
21 assigned one position more than any other position?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And could you stand up, and on the model show
24 where you were positioned most of the time?
25 A. I spent most of the time at hangar number 6,
1 near the wired fence, and later on there was a bunker.
2 THE INTERPRETER: We cannot hear him.
3 A. This was the guard post where also other
4 guards would stay when we would change shifts.
5 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Can you make him repeat
6 it? Because they said they did not hear him well.
7 MS. McMURREY:
8 Q. Mr. Landzo, can you repeat that answer about
9 where you were stationed in front of hangar 6 most of
10 the time?
11 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: He can stay seated and
12 repeat it so we will hear everything he said.
13 A. The beginning, the first few days or a week,
14 two guards were in, near the fence vis-à-vis hangar
15 number 6, and here we were looking direct at the doors
16 of hangar 6. And then I was on this mound, a new guard
17 post, where I stayed and where other guards would be
18 staying at their shift.
19 And then a machine gun was set up there.
20 Often there were people in the village who would be
21 shooting, and they would be shooting at the hangar, at
22 the camp. And that is why that guard point was set up,
23 in order to defend it if anybody tried to enter it by
24 force.
25 From that first guard point it wasn't
1 possible to control well the hangar. We couldn't see
2 who was really entering. The guard -- I'm speaking of
3 the guard point number 1, which you cannot see here on
4 the model.
5 Q. Now, you said guard point number 1, you can't
6 see it on the model?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Is that where the machine gun was set up
9 facing the door of hangar number 6?
10 A. Yes. A ditch was dug, we had a lot of
11 problems when it was raining, it was always full of
12 water, but we always had to stay there. It looked
13 directly into the hangar door, and from the beginning a
14 machine gun was set there.
15 Q. Now, the dugout on top of the hill there,
16 that was your idea, to create that dugout, wasn't it?
17 A. Yes. When I was ordered to be in that guard
18 post, I was always sitting there on the, in the field;
19 but you know, if a car passed, or some drunken soldiers
20 passed by, they could shoot me. That's why I asked
21 Mr. Delic that we should do something. He told me I
22 could dig a ditch, that I could ask two or three
23 detainees to help me. They were, in fact, doing the
24 work, I was on guard.
25 I even asked Mr. Delic to give additional
1 food rations to these detainees from our portions, and
2 for the work they did.
3 Q. Now, these dugouts up there that you created,
4 did you make those comfortable and put a bed in there,
5 did you outfit them to suit you?
6 A. Yes. Yes, I did a lot there. Often it
7 happened that in our premises we couldn't find a bed,
8 and the other places it was too cold, and often, due to
9 my health problems, I couldn't shift constantly from
10 cold to hot and vice versa, and that is why I set all
11 this up. And I could sleep from there, I could be on
12 duty there.
13 This was a dugout made of two parts; the
14 guard would be sitting and watching while I would be
15 sleeping. And the guard who was off duty could go
16 there and sleep there.
17 Q. So, even when you were off duty, not
18 guarding, assigned to guard hangar number 6, you still
19 slept in the dugout; is that right?
20 A. Yes, yes. And even when off duty I would
21 sleep there.
22 Q. And did you also make a house there for your
23 dog?
24 A. Yes, it was-- yes, some two metres from this
25 dugout, a small dog house.
1 Q. And there are two holes there, were they
2 connected?
3 A. Well, I was there. There wasn't -- there was
4 only one hole. I don't know when that was done. Maybe
5 it was dug out later on when I left the camp. I don't
6 know.
7 Q. So, the dugout that you created was to offer
8 you protection and security at that location?
9 A. Certainly, that's the only reason I made it.
10 And, of course, very often it would happen that I
11 wouldn't find a free bed to sleep in, so I put these
12 two things together, my daytime premises and my
13 sleeping area. Of course, I had to be given permission
14 to do that.
15 Q. When you were at, guarding the door of hangar
16 6, how did the detainees inside communicate if they
17 needed something?
18 A. I can't remember whether this was the
19 situation from the very beginning, but for a period of
20 time two detainees, some sort of orderlies, people in
21 charge of order and communications between the
22 detainees and the guards, they would spend almost the
23 entire day outside until some 10 p.m. And should the
24 detainee want to ask a guard or need something else, he
25 or she would have to address the orderly, the orderly
1 would then contact the guard.
2 That was when I was on duty. What was the
3 situation when I was not there, I do not know. You
4 know, there were all sorts of guards, there were many
5 changes, some of them would come and stay five, seven
6 days and then would leave. I don't know how they
7 operated during their duty service. I did what I was
8 told to do.
9 Q. So, what you're describing is there were
10 representatives of the detainees who were nominated
11 from inside that made contact with the guards if they
12 needed something?
13 A. I think that Mr. Delic appointed them. These
14 were suitable persons. I don't know why, maybe he knew
15 them, but basically these were two fine individuals. I
16 very often talked to them in a friendly manner, and my
17 assumption is that somebody, perhaps Mr. Delic or
18 Mr. Mucic appointed them.
19 I just know that they were in charge of
20 keeping the order. They couldn't appoint them from
21 among the detainees, neither could this be done by the
22 guards. So, somebody from the management of the camp
23 had to do it.
24 Q. And what were the names of the two
25 representatives of the detainees?
1 A. One was Cecez Nenad the second was Benja
2 Davor. I think that often there was another one who
3 would join them, but I cannot recall the name. I think
4 that often a third person which joined the company
5 would spend longer periods of time outside. There was
6 somebody called Ceric who was working in a car paint
7 shop before the war. I know that his family name was
8 Ceric. He had workshop, was it paint shop or was it a
9 car mechanic shop, I don't know.
10 Q. So did these representatives of the detainees
11 get better treatment? Did they get other privileges
12 that the regular detainees didn't?
13 A. Well, I can just tell you about my attitude
14 towards them. I don't know how other guards treated
15 them. I tried to observe the instructions and the
16 rules we were told to follow. Of course they were
17 treated in a better way because we were very often in
18 contact with them. They, however, were equal to me. I
19 couldn't differentiate them from the detainees inside.
20 The only difference was that I was in contact with
21 these representatives more frequently, so I could sort
22 of create an opinion about them. But, you know, maybe
23 apart from these two people, who I was in contact with
24 more frequently, the others were sort of a threat to
25 me. But there was really no basic difference between
1 them. I just knew that they were detainees. I was a
2 guard, it was my duty to be there. Sometimes, perhaps,
3 I would talk to them. Perhaps I would establish a
4 closer contact with these two than with the others, so
5 this was just the result of the situation there.
6 Q. Now, when you say sometimes you were afraid
7 of the detainees inside Hangar 6 at night-time, were
8 there two guards guarding 250 to 300 detainees?
9 A. Not just at night, round the clock. There
10 were always two guards and, for example, let me tell
11 you when we arrived there. We had very old rifles,
12 calibre 48, with five rounds. And two of us had to
13 guard this large number of detainees. At that time, we
14 didn't know that an entire wall of the hangar could be
15 opened up. And you can imagine what could have
16 happened had the detainees opened this large gate. Had
17 we known that, we would be even more afraid than we
18 were.
19 Q. Well, for someone who is not an weapons
20 expert like myself, when you say you were two guards
21 guarding 300 detainees with two old rifles with so many
22 rounds, how many bullets did you have between you?
23 A. I had five bullets in my rifle. He had five
24 bullets in his rifle. And we each had an additional
25 set of five bullets. So a total of twenty. And these
1 were repeat guns, so once you had fired a bullet, you
2 would have to repeat it. And have 250 people running
3 out of the hangar, I would have no time to repeat the
4 round. You know, it's just a matter of a few seconds
5 for these people to cover three, four metres. They
6 needed only a few seconds from the hangar to reach us.
7 Q. When you say repeat, are you talking about
8 you would have to cock the gun again or something like
9 that before it would fire again?
10 A. It's like hunting shotguns, once you have
11 fired the bullet, the shell has to be ejected, then you
12 have to cock it again and fire and so on. So it's just
13 like a hunting gun, shotgun, but this was a very old
14 military rifle that used to be in use in the past.
15 Q. Now, going back to these representatives of
16 the detainees, did those two people that were the
17 representatives, did they go and get the food and
18 distribute the food to the detainees themselves?
19 A. I think -- well, I know him, how he looks
20 like. I only --
21 Q. I didn't ask you to describe a person. I
22 asked you if the representatives were the ones who went
23 to get the food for the detainees and if the
24 representatives were the ones who distributed the food
25 to the detainees.
1 A. Not always. There were also other persons
2 that went to fetch the food. And these two individuals
3 sometimes distributed the food. Sometimes they did go
4 and fetch the food and help in the distribution. But,
5 as far as I recall, they usually sent out two other or
6 one other detainee to fetch the food.
7 Q. So it was someone from inside Hangar 6 that
8 got the food and brought it back and distributed it, it
9 wasn't one of the guards, was it?
10 A. Not the guards, the guards would not bring
11 the food. It was done by the detainees. The guard
12 would only follow these individuals from Hangar 6 to
13 the headquarters and back because they couldn't be left
14 to walk around alone.
15 Q. Just to clarify the situation, you arrived in
16 Celebici on around June 15th; is that right?
17 A. Yes, around that time.
18 Q. And when did you leave Celebici?
19 A. At the end of July, maybe the last week --
20 the last week of July, 26th, 27th of July. One or two
21 weeks after the Bradina murders, the murder of the
22 military policemen, something around that.
23 Q. Well, now I want to go to some counts in the
24 indictment that you were charged with and I am going to
25 ask you about the person by name, and, at that point, I
1 would like for you to explain what you know happened to
2 these people, okay? Let's talk about Counts 1 and 2 of
3 the indictment. There is a murder of a person named
4 Scepo Gotovac. What do you know about Mr. Gotovac and
5 when do you think it happened?
6 A. It is difficult for me to give you the
7 picture of this person. I think this is somebody who
8 was blamed to have killed a Muslim or some Muslims
9 during the Second World War. I think that's the person
10 you're referring to.
11 Q. I don't know, you're going to have to tell me
12 what happened to him, if you remember. Or you're going
13 to have to tell the Trial Chamber, excuse me, Your
14 Honours.
15 A. I know many people, how they look like, but
16 as far as their names are concerned, it's very
17 difficult for me to recall them because you would have
18 20, 30 people with the same family name. Sometimes you
19 had two, three persons with the same first name. Now,
20 if I knew who this person exactly was, I could tell you
21 what happened to him. I think that's the person.
22 Q. Now, the indictment --
23 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Excuse me, can you look
24 at the indictment and recount to him the second
25 sentence of the death, then he might remember.
1 MS. McMURREY:
2 Q. I believe Mr. Gotovac was the one in the
3 indictment where they claim an SDS badge was pinned on
4 his forehead. Would that help you?
5 A. Yes, I know. That's the person who was
6 blamed to have killed two Muslims during the Second
7 World War. Yes, I know that. I wish to apologise,
8 Your Honours, but it's difficult for me to recall the
9 names. I can recall the events, but the names I cannot
10 really. I know, sometime in June, I think, this person
11 was brought to the camp. At that time, I was not on
12 duty, I had a few hours free. I was sitting on the
13 doorstep in front of the headquarters building when
14 this individual was brought in. As far as I can recall
15 it, he was first brought into the sanitation unit.
16 That is, he was put against the wall of this unit, this
17 facility. He had --
18 Q. Excuse me, since we don't know what the
19 sanitation unit was, would you either point to it or
20 describe it to us, so we have a better picture of what
21 you're talking about.
22 A. It's the infirmary, Your Honour.
23 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Allow him to conclude,
24 then you can go back for specific places which you did
25 not understand. Let him tell you what he remembers.
1 MS. McMURREY: I was just trying to clarify
2 it, Your Honour.
3 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: You're interrupting the
4 trend of his thought.
5 MS. McMURREY: Okay, I'll try not to do that.
6 THE WITNESS: It is Building C on this
7 model. He was standing in front of this building for
8 45 minutes. His name and other information were put
9 down. I know that they took away from him a knife that
10 was hanging around his belt. It had an inscription,
11 Kiseljak Busovaca and a year. And I asked Mr. Delic if
12 I could have the knife. He allowed me to have this
13 knife and this knife at a later time was given to an
14 Arab TV crew. I don't know why this was done. But
15 then, this person was taken to Hangar 6.
16 After a period of time, I saw him in front of
17 the headquarters' buildings -- well, an old man came. I
18 saw him often walking along the barbed wire. We called
19 him Father Huso. He came and asked for the warden.
20 And I know that he was talking through the window to
21 them in the office where Delic and Mucic were sitting.
22 Then he went into the office. I don't know what they
23 talked about in the office, some ten fifteen minutes
24 later, Delic asked me to go come to the window. I
25 arrived there and I saw Mucic, Delic and Boric and this
1 old man. They were sitting, they were drinking and I
2 think that Mucic wrote down the name of this new
3 detainee on a piece of paper. He gave it to Delic and
4 Delic gave it to me. And Delic then told me, tomorrow
5 I want to see this individual with his feet forward at
6 the gate to the camp and I don't care how you're going
7 to do it. That was during the day. That was the order
8 to me.
9 During the night, I, together with some
10 three, four other guards, I called out this individual
11 to go out of the hangar because I was given an order.
12 I was expected to submit a report subsequently whether
13 I have executed the order or not. So I took this
14 person out of the hangar, the five of us, I think. We
15 would beat this person. We would kick them. Somebody
16 kick him with a rifle butt, well, you know, it was
17 dark, it was difficult to see. And this area was not
18 lit, so, sometimes, we guards would kick each other.
19 After about half an hour, I brought this person back.
20 I know that he was alive when I took him back. I went
21 back to Mr. Delic. I told him that the order has been
22 executed. In the morning I was told that the man was
23 dead.
24 Q. Now, when you say that you called him out,
25 you went to the door of Hangar 6 and called Mr. Scepo
1 Gotovac to come out of the hangar?
2 A. Yes, yes.
3 Q. And then when you say he was beaten by four
4 or five guards, that means each one of them were under
5 the orders to carry out this order?
6 MS. McHENRY: Your Honour, good afternoon. I
7 would like to object to the continued leading of
8 Defence counsel, including to that question.
9 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Yes. His evidence was
10 clear, the instruction was given to him, not to the
11 others.
12 MS. McMURREY:
13 Q. Well, then, how did the other guards come to
14 participate in this?
15 A. Somebody sent them, perhaps they were ordered
16 too, I don't know. When I went out to execute the
17 order, they joined me. They said that they had been
18 ordered to do it. Whether they had been ordered or
19 told to do it, I don't know. But we -- I was ordered,
20 I know that, that this man should go through the gate
21 with his feet forward, which meant that he was to be
22 killed.
23 Q. And when you took Mr. Gotovac back to the
24 hangar, did you put him inside or did you have help
25 putting him inside? How did he get back into the
1 hangar?
2 A. He walked. He was bent a little, so I held
3 him. I think that another guard helped him to take him
4 back, but he could walk back. Since, during night, we
5 were prohibited to enter the hangar, we opened the
6 door, he would make two or three steps forward, then, I
7 think, he sat down. It was dark, I don't know exactly,
8 so we closed the door. And the next day I was told
9 that a detainee died. My assumption was that.
10 Q. I'm sorry, I didn't get the rest of the
11 interpretation?
12 THE INTERPRETER: The sentence was not
13 finished.
14 MS. McMURREY:
15 Q. When you escorted Mr. Gotovac back into
16 Hangar No. 6, did he have anything on his forehead at
17 that time?
18 A. No. Well, let me tell you this. We, when we
19 were given the order to do something, to beat somebody
20 up or anything else, the order was clear that, in any
21 event, whether we should beat them to death or just
22 beat them, that they should not be kicked at their
23 head, so that there would be no bruises on their head.
24 So there was no possibility for anyone to hurt the
25 head. No way. So all the injuries were afflicted on
1 the body. I don't know why this was the order we were
2 given, but we were given this order and we would obey
3 it.
4 Q. Did you place an SDS badge on Mr. Gotovac's
5 head or did you see anybody else place one on there?
6 A. I personally didn't. But everything is
7 possible. It's dark, you have five, six people who are
8 beating up him. Maybe somebody did it, I don't know, I
9 cannot tell you this. But I know that I personally
10 didn't do it. Whether somebody else did it, I don't
11 know. It's possible. There is a possibility,
12 everything is possible. I don't really know it. I
13 just know that I didn't do it.
14 Q. And you said that you all were forbidden to
15 go into the hangar after dark in Hangar 6. What is the
16 reason for that?
17 A. Probably to avoid the detainees attacking the
18 guards, I don't know, that's my assumption. But I know
19 that the order was that we can only open a door for a
20 detainee to go in or out, but we shouldn't ever enter
21 the hangar. There was no light in the hangar, so no
22 guard during the night would go into this hangar. And
23 I was told that that Hangar No. 9 also was not lit and
24 that guards were not supposed to go there.
25 Q. Would you have been afraid to go in?
1 A. Absolutely. Well, when you have 250 people
2 inside, you enter alone, you don't know what can
3 happen. You can expect that from each detainee, that
4 they will try to escape, particularly at a time of
5 war. And there have been cases of attacks on guards.
6 There have been attempts to escape. That's what I
7 heard.
8 Q. Okay. Let's go to Count No. 5 and 6 in the
9 indictment. Did you know a Serbian man named Simo
10 Jovanovic? I mean a Bosnian man of Serbian decent
11 named Simo Jovanovic?
12 A. I didn't know him prior to the war. But
13 later on, I heard that he lived in my street, but I
14 didn't know him. Only when he died, I knew who the man
15 was from where he came. I was on guard one night and a
16 group of guards came, who came from the Village of
17 Idbar, Newgarde (Phoen), and Simo also originally came
18 from there. He had a family home there with a big
19 farm. These guards came. And before coming to the
20 hangar, I was on that small mount and told me that I
21 should call out Simo Jovanovic because they wanted to
22 talk to him. There were two guard positions. The
23 guard on the mount would communicate with the detainees
24 and the other guard always had to be present at the
25 machine gun if more detainees try to exit by force. I
1 asked them why they wanted to see the man. They said
2 they had an order to talk to him. I called the man. I
3 couldn't check at that point whether they were ordered
4 to do so or not. There was a telephone, but it was out
5 of order, so I did call him out. They took him and
6 they took him to the hangar workshop, workshop for the
7 repair of weapons. I then went back to my guard
8 position, but I could hear the beating and I could hear
9 the shouts.
10 Some twenty minutes later, one of these came
11 and he said, we finished this Chetnik and we wrote the
12 will. And this was a big man. He was maybe a metre
13 90. A hefty man. And we really had a lot of trouble
14 to bring him to that hangar. And the next day I heard
15 about it. I don't really know why he was killed. But
16 I did hear later on that his property was divided among
17 the inhabitants. I know that he was beaten that night
18 and that also he died from that beating later that
19 night.
20 Q. You say he was taken to the workshop. Could
21 you point on that model where the workshop is? So it
22 would be the hangar next to Hangar No. 6?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And did you participate at all in the beating
25 of Mr. Jovanovic?
1 A. No. I was not ordered to do so. I was on
2 guard duty. I only called him out and accompanied him
3 there. That was my duty.
4 Q. And the position that you always held at the
5 dugout over Hangar 6, is that the position that had
6 along with it the responsibility of communicating with
7 the detainees?
8 A. Yes, yes. That guard from that guard
9 position was to communicate with the detainees because
10 the other guard was always in close proximity of the
11 machine gun, looking directly at the hangar door.
12 Q. On July 12th, 1992, what happened, if you
13 remember?
14 A. Yes, I remember well. Somewhere at 1.00 or
15 2.00 p.m., I just ended my tour of duty at the point
16 Hangar 6. I came to the command building when Mr.
17 Delic came out of the building and he told me that all
18 guards who are not on duty, that they have to go to
19 Bradina because some policemen were killed by
20 Chetniks. At that point, twelve guards, twelve of us
21 headed by Sejo Mustafic and Buturovic, who was driving
22 the pickup, and we went to Konjic and Podrasac, to the
23 sports field, and Bradina where we were carrying out a
24 field inspection after the killing of these policemen.
25 Q. And when you got up to Bradina, or, more
1 specifically, was it a town named Repovci?
2 A. It was a halfway between the Village of
3 Bradina and Repovci. It was really halfway between the
4 two villages. That's where the killing took place.
5 Q. And what did you find when you arrived
6 there?
7 A. My brother at the time was at the military
8 police. I heard that four military policemen were
9 killed in ambush. I was afraid that it might not be my
10 brother. When other military policemen arrived, they
11 mentioned the name of my brother and some other names.
12 And as long as I didn't come to Bradina, I didn't know
13 who was really killed. But then, when I came, I saw
14 who the people who were killed and how they were
15 killed.
16 Q. And who did you recognise?
17 A. I recognised all the four military policemen
18 and the other five people accompanying these policemen
19 I didn't know. Aziz Arahmetli, the brother of
20 Jusufovic. I recognised Ive, my neighbour. Then Isak
21 Pandzo, who worked for a certain period of time in
22 Miro's restaurant. And I recognised another neighbour,
23 Zovonimir Pandzo, we called him Pandzo Croat. Those
24 four were killed and five civilians were killed also.
25 Five policemen, a fifth chap who arrived from Germany
1 before the outbreak of the war, both of his ears were
2 cut off after he was killed. I have seen that. There
3 was no blood coming out from these wounds from where
4 his ears were cut off.
5 Q. And in what condition did you find Ibro?
6 A. Even before coming close to that body, I
7 recognised him 120 metres away. His face was turned to
8 the soil, but I recognised him from the body. I fell,
9 I sat down on the road. At that point, I thought I'd
10 prefer my brother to be killed than him. Then I
11 succeeded in getting up. And he had a big hole on his
12 head and many bullet holes in his body, a lot of
13 blood. Then next to him, Aziz, his lower part of the
14 leg was severed. And, under it, Isad Ljeva's body
15 could be observed. I knew him, but he was lying on his
16 shoulders. His mouth was open. His eyes were open, as
17 if he were recognising somebody who was killing him.
18 As if an expression of surprise. And then Pandzo, who,
19 he was lying flat on his belly and he had a wound on
20 his head. And Bato who came from Germany, he was lying
21 on the other side of that van with both ears cut off
22 while the civilians, the penises were cut off. So you
23 could -- bodies were strewn all over the place.
24
25
1 Q. And when you viewed that, were you assigned
2 some specific duty that you were to perform then, too?
3 A. Yes. Where, where? In Bradina or in
4 Celebici?
5 Q. There at the scene. You came up there for a
6 purpose, it wasn't just to look at the bodies; what was
7 your purpose for coming up there?
8 A. Before we came to that place we were
9 inspecting the terrain, and we needed some 45 minutes,
10 we were inspecting the terrain. We were told that the
11 remaining Serbs from Bradina had done this. We
12 inspected the field in order to see were there any
13 traces or any indication. We checked the terrain, and
14 I don't know if anybody else in the other group
15 continued further off. After seeing all of this, we
16 turned back and went to Celebici.
17 Q. Was Damir Gogic with you?
18 A. He was in the group of members of the
19 military police, and there were people from the
20 military police of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina from
21 Konjic.
22 Q. And then did you return to Celebici?
23 A. Yes, yes, after some spending half an hour at
24 that location we returned to Celebici because we had to
25 take our turns there, and so on.
1 Q. And when you were travelling back to Celebici
2 in the truck, was there anything said?
3 A. No, throughout the entire trip back nobody
4 said anything, not a word. We could only see that sad
5 expression of the faces, because we all knew these
6 policemen, everybody was having, was thinking deeply,
7 thinking deeply and nobody uttered a word. It was a
8 shock for all of the people present there.
9 Q. When you arrived back at Celebici, what
10 happened?
11 A. When we arrived to Celebici in front of the
12 command building, on the window two detainees were
13 cutting bread, preparing it for the dinnertime. And
14 our van stopped, we jumped out and 11 or 12 of us
15 started beating those two detainees. We were beating
16 them for some five minutes, and then Delic took a gun
17 and fired it in the air in order to -- we at that point
18 stopped. It got us out of the shock and we stopped.
19 Q. And then what happened next?
20 A. After that, a few minutes later I went to
21 hangar number 6, because, you see, I knew of these
22 people, some of my best friends were killed in
23 Bradina. We were told that the Serbs did this from
24 Bradina.
25 I came to that hangar and I told to all the
1 detainees from Bradina to stand up, and when you enter
2 the hangar on the right side I beat, I started beating
3 two, two of them, two of the detainees in order to --
4 you see, it was to get the anger out, but it wasn't to
5 injure them, and the third or the fourth person I hit,
6 that person fell, fell on the floor.
7 Q. Well, I have to ask you, when you keep saying
8 beating, do you mean you hit them once, twice, for an
9 extended period of time, or was it moving from one to
10 the next?
11 A. Well, I went from one to another of those who
12 were standing up, and I think the first I hit them
13 once, twice, maybe three times each. It's not that I
14 was concentrating on one. I was angry against the
15 people from Bradina. I was told that the Serbs from
16 Bradina killed these policemen. And after hitting them
17 once or twice, each one of them, one of them fell.
18 And I saw as if that person was losing his
19 breath, couldn't breathe. Then I called one of the
20 detainees who earlier worked in Konjic in the hospital,
21 he helped. I know that he was doing something to that
22 man, and he stopped shaking. Then I asked the other
23 two or three detainees and took the man to the
24 infirmary. I wanted really to kill them all, but I
25 didn't have the intention to do anything to that man.
1 Later on I also met his son, and that son
2 told me that this man had earlier cardiac problems, and
3 I hit him once or twice, and that was what then caused
4 these problems. He later on died in the infirmary in
5 the camp.
6 Q. Did you take him to the infirmary yourself?
7 A. No, no, two or three other detainees helped
8 him to the infirmary. They were carrying him in their
9 arms. Maybe, maybe he could have walked, I don't know.
10 So, we took him, carried him. And the doctors tried to
11 do something, tried to help him, but regrettably he
12 died on that day. I don't know exactly what day, but
13 on that day, he died.
14 Q. Did you go to the infirmary to check on him?
15 A. Yes, I was standing at the entrance door of
16 the infirmary while the doctors were assisting him.
17 Q. And did you tell the doctors anything?
18 A. I believe I said that they should try to help
19 him, to save him. I can't remember exactly the words,
20 but in that I spoke in that sense.
21 Q. Were you acting under orders at this time?
22 A. No.
23 MS. McMURREY: Your Honours, if this is a
24 convenient place to stop, it's really warm in here. I
25 know everybody is probably suffering and we could
1 continue tomorrow.
2 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Yes, we can continue
3 tomorrow. We can continue tomorrow morning, 10 a.m.
4 MS. McMURREY: Thank you.
5 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: The Trial Chamber will
6 now rise.
7 --- Whereupon hearing adjourned at 5.35
8 p.m. to be reconvened on Tuesday,
9 the 28th day of July, 1998 at 10.00 a.m.
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