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"-Q. Very well. You say that you were separated from the men, and the women and children were ordered to move towards the SUP [the acronym for the police] of Zvornik, and the men stayed behind in front of the entrance to the building. Is that exactly how it happened? Witness B-1058, questioned by the accused, Slobodan Milošević, about the moment Serb forces murdered her husband and two sons in the town of Zvornik in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She testified on 9 September 2003 in the case against Slobodan Milošević.
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In April 1992, witness B-1058, whose name and identity was withheld from the public during her testimony before the Tribunal, was living with her husband and two sons, aged 22 and 24, in the town of Zvornik in northeast Bosnia and Herzegovina on the border with Serbia. The town enjoyed a mixed ethnic composition with a majority-Muslim population. Witness B-1058 told the Tribunal how in November 1991 she disbelievingly watched images on television of the fall to Serb forces of the Croatian town of Vukovar; she first thought she was watching old World War II footage. When conflict ignited in Bosnia and Herzegovina and affected the nearby eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina in March 1992, which witness B-1058 also saw reports of on television, she could hardly believe it. Her sister, who lived there, told B-1058 that the reports were true and that their other sister’s two sons had been murdered.
Indications that the war would spread to Zvornik occurred in the beginning of April 1992, with the arrival of tanks in the area, as well as small-arms fire coming from the nearby settlement of Mali Zvornik that lay across the river in Serbia. On 8 April 1992, negotiations were held in Mali Zvornik between Zvornik officials and Željko Ražnatović, also known as “Arkan” who represented the Serbs. [Ražnatović commanded a paramilitary unit known as “Arkanovci” or “Arkan’s men” which operated in Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout the war and were allegedly involved in a number of crimes charged in the case against Slobodan Milošević. Ražnatović was indicted by the Tribunal for crimes in Bosnia but never stood trial as he was killed in a gang-land shooting in Belgrade.]. A Zvornik official present at those negotiations, who also testified before the Tribunal under the pseudonym B-1237, told B-1058 that the situation was grave and advised her to leave. However, she decided to stay as she had Serb friends and she felt that she had not done anything wrong.
The attack on Zvornik commenced shortly later, on the evening of 8 April 1992, when the city was shelled from Mali Zvornik in Serbia. The witness and other people living in her apartment block took cover in the building’s cellar, which quickly became full. About 12 men, 15 to 16 women, three children, and two babies took shelter there.
On the morning of 9 August 1992, at about 10.00am, the witness heard a strong detonation and the door to the cellar exploded open. Immediately afterwards, about ten soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms, black wooly hats rolled down as masks, and fingerless gloves, burst into the cellar and threatened them with long rifles. The witness could tell that they were from Serbia by their accents. Some of the men identified themselves as Šešelj’s men, referring to ICTY accused Vojislav Šešelj, President of the Serbian Radical Party, a political party in Serbia, and commander of paramilitary units commonly referred to as “Šešeljevci” or “Šešelj’s men”. The people in the cellar were told to hand over their weapons and the men were ordered outside to be searched. However, no one had any weapons, not even a pocket knife.
The women and children were rushed out of the cellar. The witness saw the men who had been hiding there with their hands on their heads and with their backs facing the apartment building. The witness was the last person out of the cellar and was ordered not to look around and to go to the police (SUP) building. One soldier forced her to move by putting a rifle to her back and cursed her.
About five minutes later, after the witness had walked about 200 metres from the cellar, she heard a simultaneous burst of gunfire from behind. She tried to look around, but the soldier poked her in the back with a rifle, preventing her from doing so. The witness testified that the gunshots could only have come from the area outside the apartment building where Serb soldiers had lined up the men.
As she walked down the street on her way to the police building, the witness heard loud Chetnik [a reference to Serbian nationalist World War II fighters] music being played, and saw two dead bodies lying outside houses. She and the others were then ordered inside the library opposite the police building, where soldiers were abusive to them, cursing their mothers and Alija Izetbegović, at the time President of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
While the witness was in the library, she overheard a Serb woman, who had been permitted to go back to the apartment building to change her clothes, tell another lady that she had seen the awful sight of the dead bodies of the men who had been taken out of the cellar. Other women who arrived in the library also said that they had seen the dead bodies of the witness’s husband and two children outside their apartment building. Witness B-1058 told the Tribunal that both Arkan’s and Šešelj’s men had participated in the killings.
Later in the day, the witness and others were expelled from Zvornik. Arkan came to the library and told them that he would send buses to pick them up. When the buses arrived, the witness and the others were herded onto them. Before the bus left Zvornik, the witness saw four men taken off it. She never saw them again. While travelling out of Zvornik, the witness saw many dead bodies lying in the gardens of houses.
The witness was dropped off in Banja Koviljača in Serbia, just across its border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. About a week later, the witness and a friend returned to Zvornik to find out what had happened to their families. She was directed to the Serb headquarters in Karakaj where its commander, Dragan Nikolić, told her that the men she was looking for were not on any of their lists and she could go home. As the witness was leaving to walk the three kilometers back to Zvornik, the commander of a truck which was about to leave told the witness to get a lift on the back of it. The soldiers in the truck, however, were not prepared to take the “balijas” [Serb pejorative term for Bosniaks] so they had to walk on foot.
The witness then went to see Branko Grujić, who was president of the Serb municipality. Grujić, however, told the witness that he could not help her and that there was no longer a place for Muslims in Zvornik. [Grujić would later stand trial before the War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court for crimes committed in Zvornik in the first investigation that the Tribunal’s Office of the Prosecutor transferred to the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office].
After speaking with Grujić, witness B-1058, briefly went back to her own apartment block. At the spot where she had last seen the men from the cellar, she saw her husband’s hat and one of her son’s shoes on the ground covered in blood. There was also blood on the peppered bullet holes on the walls. On the ground, she saw a number of spent bullets and three or four garrotte wires.
Of the men who were taken from the cellar and killed outside, one was the witness’s husband and two others were her sons.
Witness B-1058 testified on 9 September 2003 in the case against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, who was charged with crimes committed in Zvornik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, among other places. He died in custody on 11 March 2006, and proceedings against him were terminated.
>> Read Witness B-1058’s full testimony.