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Court Hears of Teslic Prison Ordeal
Disabled witness describes abuse he says he was subjected to while being detaine
d by Bosnian Serbs.
By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY
TRI Issue 677,
28 Jan 11
The last prosecution witness in the trial of former Bosnian Serb police official
s Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin this week described his imprisonment and mi
streatment in a prison cell in the town of Teslic.
Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin are alleged to have participated in a joint c
riminal enterprise aimed at the permanent removal of non-Serbs from the territor
y of an intended Serbian state.
They are charged with ten counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thei
r alleged crimes include persecution, extermination, murder, torture, inhumane a
cts and deportation as crimes against humanity, in addition to murder, torture a
nd cruel treatment as violations of the laws or customs of war.
Zupljanin, who became an adviser to the then Bosnian Serb president and Hague in
dictee Radovan Karadzic in 1994, is accused of extermination, murder, persecutio
n, and deportation of non-Serbs in north-western Bosnia-Hercegovina, BiH, betwee
n April and December 1992, including Teslic.
Stanisic is charged with the murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civ
ilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his
subordinates.
The indictment against Stanisic states that he was appointed minister in charge
of the newly-founded Bosnian Serb interior ministry, MUP, in April 1992 and was
also a member of the Bosnian Serb government.
The witness, identified as ST-008, gave his testimony with measures of face and
voice distortion.
He said that he had been arrested in early June 1992 and taken to the police sta
tion in Teslic, where he had found a large number of imprisoned civilians.
ST-008 said that the policemen who took him away from home did not tell him why
he had been arrested.
“They never said why or what for, they just took me away,” he said. “When I told them
I need my crutches, they said, ‘where you're going, you won't need them.’”
Asked by prosecutor Alexis Demirdjian what happened when they reached the police
station, the witness answered, “I was suddenly asked to leave the car and I said
I couldn t leave, I was sitting in the back and had a hard time getting up and l
eaving the car, I had to take my legs out slowly, one by one.”
The witness said that after he had left the car, the policeman ordered him to cl
imb the stairs to the police station.
“I said I can t, I don t have my crutches, I don t have anything, and he then said
, ‘get in quickly’, where I answered ‘I can t, you can kill me without my crutches’, and
he started cursing my mother, and I told him, ‘kill me, I can t.’”
ST-008 said that after a policeman helped him climb up the stairs to the police
station, he met a market inspector from Teslic, a Bosnian Muslim named Asir Popi
c, who was standing facing the wall, with his legs spread apart, with his hand r
aised in the traditional Serbian three-fingered salute.
The witness said that he was later ordered to go to another building, to a polic
e prison cell where he "found four or five people who were already there".
Inside the “three metres by four metres” room, the police would "come, bring people,
and take people away,” he said, adding that the prisoners were subjected to beati
ngs.
“There was shouting, screaming, and so on, it was horrible, I was hoping that nobo
dy ever goes through something like that ever again,” ST-008 said.
“You said you saw four to five people in the cell. Did that number change?” the pros
ecutor asked.
"Every day, every hour, every five to ten minutes, people were coming and being
taken away, we were 40-50 in the room and we couldn t even sit down, we were for
ced to stand as there were 40 or 50 of us inside that small room,” the witness sai
d. “We were standing like statues.”
In addition, “the whole room was stinking of ammonia from urine”, he continued.
“Because there was no place to stand in the room so we had to even stand in the ad
jacent toilet, it was stinking of urine and faeces, our eyes were full of tears,
so we had to shout to be either left out or to allowed to get to air.”
As he was disabled, the witness said he had to lie down on the floor while the o
ther prisoners stood on him.
“I lay down because I couldn t stand it anymore, and people would step on me, ther
e was no place to sit, let alone sleep,” he said.
They were only given something to eat after a few days, he said.
“It was Bajram (a Muslim holiday) and we were given a sandwich and some water just
to wet our lips,” he said, explaining that 50 people were given a 10 litre canist
er to share. “And that was nothing given how many we were.”
The witness said that they were forced to sing Serb songs every time one of the
policemen or paramilitaries would come in.
ST-008 later explained that after 12 days, they were ordered to board a bus.
“We had no idea where we were being taken to, we were shaking with fear when we we
re put on the bus, we were wondering what would happen to us,” he said.
“It wasn t a long ride, some 15-20 minutes, and we reached the Territorial Defence
(TO) hangar, which was previously a TO command centre. While we were sitting in
the bus, we were not allowed to raise our heads or look outside the windows, al
l of us had to put our heads down.
“We were ordered to leave the bus and stand in line in front of the hangar. We ent
ered one by one, I saw that the TO hangar was full of cars, military and civilia
n cars.
“We had to go through the corridor and then into the hall, there was police standi
ng on the left and right.”
The witness said the officers held clubs in their hands and were hitting people
at random.
People in police and military uniforms, he continued, would keep on bringing gro
ups of four or five people to the hangar.
“They d be brought and thrown in, so that ultimately we ended up being 200-250 peo
ple in total,” he said.
“What was the nationality of the people in the hangar?” Demirdjian asked.
“Only Bosniak Muslims and Croats, there wasn’t a single Serb with us, and there was
no reason for a Serb to be there in the first place,” the witness replied.
People in police and military uniforms would come from outside and beat the peop
le at the hangar, the witness said, adding, "They would beat us without any orde
r, simply picking people for beating, until they got tired."
The witness stated that he spent a total of 50 days as a prisoner. Asked what ha
ppened to his property in Teslic, he said that Serb refugees were allowed to mov
e into his home, and that he was barred from returning to it “and not even allowed
to take my orthopedic shoes, let alone a wheelchair”.
Stanisic surrendered in March 2005, while Zupljanin was arrested by the Serbian
authorities on June 10, 2008, after 13 years as a fugitive. Their indictments we
re joined together in September 2008 and both have pleaded not guilty to all cou
nts.
The trial began in September 2009.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sarajevo.