Post by theblackswans on Sept 6, 2008 11:03:49 GMT -5
Huso Kurspahic decides to forgo protective measures and testifies in public about the living pyre in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad and other crimes committed in the spring of 1992 Milan and Sredoje Lukic are charged with. Kurspahic lost his mother, his sisters and about fifty other relatives in the house in Pionirska Street. Kurspahic already testified against Mitar Vasiljevic, with protective measures
Huso Kurspahic, former police officer from Visegrad, lost his mother, two sisters and almost fifty other relatives who were burned alive in the Pionirska Street. According to the indictment, Milan and Sredoje Lukic took some seventy Bosniaks from the village of Koritnik – including a newborn baby – to a house, shut them in and set the house on fire. Kurspahic’s evidence is based on the information he got from his deceased father, one of few who managed to escape from the burning house. As Kurspahic said, his father left him the truth about the event as his legacy.
Kurspahic first testified about the crime in 2001 at the trial of Mitar Vasiljevic, who was acquitted on that count, but was sentenced to 15 years for other crimes. Today at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic the prosecutor tendered into evidence the transcript of Kurspahic’s evidence in the Vasiljevic case. In 2001, Kurspahic was granted full protective measures. This time, Kurspahic said, he decided to testify in public and to see the accused Sredoje Lukic face to face. The two of them had worked together in the Visegrad police for ten years.
Kurspahic also testified about the disappearance of his younger brother. He knows that in early May 1992 his brother was taken to the police station and was later taken to the Uzamnica barracks where he was ‘killed by Milan Lukic’, as far as the witness knows. Repeated abuse of Bosniaks detained in the barracks is among the charges against Milan and Sredoje Lukic.
In the cross-examination, Milan Lukic’s defense counsel insisted that the witness didn’t have ‘first-hand’ information and had changed his statement as time went by. Sredoje Lukic’s counsel denied his client was ‘anywhere near the terrible crime’ in the Pionirska Street, offering his condolences to Kurspahic. The defense counsel went on to ask the witness if he could even suspect a colleague he ‘had known for such a long time’ could commit such a crime against his family. Sredoje would be able to do it, the witness said.
The second witness who gave evidence today, VG-038, had managed to jump through a window of the burning house in the Pionirska Street on 14 June 1992. Most of the seventy-odd Bosniaks locked inside burned to death. The witness was only thirteen at the time. The transcript of his evidence at the trial of Mitar Vasiljevic was also admitted into evidence. Most of his testimony today was given in closed session.
In her evidence at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, prosecution witness VG-13 describes how she managed to save her son and herself from the house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad where some 70 Bosniak women, children and old men were locked in and burned alive in June 1992
‘I decided that I’d rather be killed by a bullet because there is no worse death than being burned alive’. This is what protected witness testifying at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic under the pseudonym VG-13 said explaining why she had decided to try to save herself and her 14-year old son by jumping out of the window of the house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad. Some 70 Muslims were set on fire and burned alive in that house on 14 June 1992.
In her evidence yesterday, the witness recounted the events that led to the massacre. Today VG-13 described in detail the living pyre in the Pionirska Street. The carpets in one of the rooms in Adem Omeragic’s house were ‘sticky and wet from some liquid’. An hour after they were locked in that house, she said, Milan Lukic showed up on the door, accompanied by Mitar Vasiljevic. Lukic threw an explosive device into the house. The carpets caught fire and the flames went ‘high up, as if they were there to keep God warm’, as she described.
Although the explosion injured her leg and her hand was on fire, VG-13 decided to throw her son out through the window first and then to jumped our herself and try to run away. As she was jumping out, a bullet hit her in the left shoulder, but she managed to hide in a creek nearby. From there she heard the ‘cries and sobbing’ from the house for some hours. She then moved to a sewer close by, where she remained for the next three days.
After three days with no food, water and sleep, she got out of the sewer. Her ‘wounds were infested with maggots’. She ate a ‘handful of green plums and an onion’ and managed to ‘creep’ to a Bosniak village not far away. That same evening, after receiving first aid, she continued on towards Gorazde ‘through the woods’, where she was finally hospitalized. Five months later, the witness learned that her son was alive but did not reunite with him until 1995. Her son testified at this trial earlier this week under the pseudonym VG-38.
Milan Lukic’s defense counsel insisted that VG-13 didn’t know Milan Lukic personally. Therefore, in his view, she could have wrongly identified him as the perpetrator under the influence of ‘widespread stories about his alleged crimes’. The witness replied she didn’t come to the Tribunal to accuse anyone but to speak the truth; it is up to the court to decide who is right and who is wrong.
Sredoje Lukic's defense counsel again claimed that his client had taken no part in this incident. In fact, Sredoje Lukic was not in Visegrad that day at all, he said. The witness admitted that she had not seen Sredoje Lukic, but other prisoners in the Pionirska Street house had said he had been there.
VG-32, one of the two Bosniaks who survived the execution on the Drina river bank near Visegrad on 7 June 1992 testifies at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic. As he identified Milan Lukic in the courtroom, the witness said that he 'remembered well his smile' before the execution on the river bank
Protected witness VG-32 is one of the two survivors from a group of seven Bosniaks executed, as alleged by the indictment, by the accused Milan Lukic and his accomplices on 7 June 1992 on the Drina river bank near Visegrad. The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic opened in July 2008 with the testimony of witness VG-14 who spoke about this event.
After a few weeks in Gorazde, the witness returned to Visegrad in early May 1992 because he had a work obligation in the local health care center. The witness moved to the house of his father-in-law; it was located near his workplace to avoid having to pass through numerous check points all over town. The situation was getting risky: 'Muslims were disappearing every day', he said.
In the afternoon of 7 June 1992, Milan Lukic and several armed men came to the house of his father-in-law. They took the witness and his friend to a nearby house where a number of captured Muslims – including a boy – were detained. After he took all of their valuables, Milan ordered four of them to come with him. A car with three other prisoners was waiting outside the house. They all drove to the Vilina Vlas hotel, where they were joined by Mitar Vasiljevic. Vasiljevic, Milan Lukic's best man, is currently serving a 15-year sentence for his part in this crime.
They left the hotel and headed towards the Drina River. When they got close to the river bank, Milan lined them up facing the water and ordered his companions to open fire at the prisoners. 'I felt a flicker of hope', VG-32 said describing the moments when he jumped in the river before he was hit and a body of another victim fell on top of him. When he heard the attackers leaving, VG-32 realized that another man had survived the execution without injuries. The two of them remained in the water for some time and then took shelter in the bushes. When the night fell, they swam across the river 'holding to a tree stump'.
VG-32 also gave evidence about his encounter with witness VG-114 several days after she managed to escape from the house set on fire in the Bikavac neighborhood. Milan and Sredoje Lukic are also indicted for this crime. The state VG-114 was in when they met ‘went beyond the worst horror movie’, he said. Her face was burned beyond recognition and the wounds in her hands were 'full of maggots'. In its opening statement the prosecution indicated that witness VG-114 would be testifying without protective measures. VG-114 wanted to describe how it felt 'to be burned alive' and to look Milan Lukic, her schoolmate, 'who did this to her' in the eye as she told her tale.
In the cross-examination, Milan Lukic's defense counsel continued with his mistaken identity strategy: he claims the witness mistakenly identified the accused because he didn’t know him personally. According to the defense counsel, the information the witness had about the accused were based on rumors. The witness rejected this argument saying that the person sitting in the courtroom was Milan Lukic who took him to the execution site on 7 June 1992 and 'whose smile he remembered very well'.
Mother and son who managed to escape the living pyre in the Pionirska Street on 14 June 1992 gave evidence at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, charged with crimes committed in Visegrad. The witnesses recounted how they were humiliated before the house in which they were shut in together with some 70 other Bosniak prisoners was set on fire. Only seven of them survived
Two survivors of the massacre in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad, mother and son testifying under the pseudonyms VG-18 and VG-84 gave evidence about what happened on 14 June 1992 when some 70 Bosniaks from the village of Koritnik were burned alive in a house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad.
VG-84 was barely 14 years-old when he was shut in a house in the Pionirska Street together with his mother and about 70 of his neighbors. In his brief examination-in chief by the prosecutor he said that there were some fifteen other children in the house, including a two-day old baby. He couldn't imagine that he would 'burn in flames' at the age of fourteen; he 'played until the very last moment'.
In his replies to the defense counsel of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, the witness confirmed that he didn't know the two accused before that day. He had heard their names from older people who recognized them when they came to the house to take away their 'money and gold'. In his words, when the JNA had left Visegrad, 'everybody was scared' when the names of Milan and Sredoje Lukic were mentioned. The rumor had it that they go around Muslim villages 'burning down houses and taking men away'. The witness was not able to identify them in the courtroom because, as he put it, he was 'too young to be able to clearly remember faces'.
In the part of her evidence given in public session, VG-18, housewife from the village of Koritnik and mother of witness VG-84 talked about the humiliation and abuse of captured women prior to the fire. Being forced to strip naked together with other women was, as she said, 'worse than death'. The witness said that in that afternoon Milan Lukic took two young girls away for several hours. When they returned, everybody was 'ashamed' to ask them what had happened, but everybody guessed that they had been raped.
'It hurts to know that my village is empty', the witness said at the end of her evidence. She was visibly upset. She said that ever since 14 June 1992 she had had problems 'with nerves and high blood pressure' every time she thought about this incident.
The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic will continue on Monday when the defense counsel will examine the witness VG-18.
Huso Kurspahic, former police officer from Visegrad, lost his mother, two sisters and almost fifty other relatives who were burned alive in the Pionirska Street. According to the indictment, Milan and Sredoje Lukic took some seventy Bosniaks from the village of Koritnik – including a newborn baby – to a house, shut them in and set the house on fire. Kurspahic’s evidence is based on the information he got from his deceased father, one of few who managed to escape from the burning house. As Kurspahic said, his father left him the truth about the event as his legacy.
Kurspahic first testified about the crime in 2001 at the trial of Mitar Vasiljevic, who was acquitted on that count, but was sentenced to 15 years for other crimes. Today at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic the prosecutor tendered into evidence the transcript of Kurspahic’s evidence in the Vasiljevic case. In 2001, Kurspahic was granted full protective measures. This time, Kurspahic said, he decided to testify in public and to see the accused Sredoje Lukic face to face. The two of them had worked together in the Visegrad police for ten years.
Kurspahic also testified about the disappearance of his younger brother. He knows that in early May 1992 his brother was taken to the police station and was later taken to the Uzamnica barracks where he was ‘killed by Milan Lukic’, as far as the witness knows. Repeated abuse of Bosniaks detained in the barracks is among the charges against Milan and Sredoje Lukic.
In the cross-examination, Milan Lukic’s defense counsel insisted that the witness didn’t have ‘first-hand’ information and had changed his statement as time went by. Sredoje Lukic’s counsel denied his client was ‘anywhere near the terrible crime’ in the Pionirska Street, offering his condolences to Kurspahic. The defense counsel went on to ask the witness if he could even suspect a colleague he ‘had known for such a long time’ could commit such a crime against his family. Sredoje would be able to do it, the witness said.
The second witness who gave evidence today, VG-038, had managed to jump through a window of the burning house in the Pionirska Street on 14 June 1992. Most of the seventy-odd Bosniaks locked inside burned to death. The witness was only thirteen at the time. The transcript of his evidence at the trial of Mitar Vasiljevic was also admitted into evidence. Most of his testimony today was given in closed session.
In her evidence at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, prosecution witness VG-13 describes how she managed to save her son and herself from the house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad where some 70 Bosniak women, children and old men were locked in and burned alive in June 1992
‘I decided that I’d rather be killed by a bullet because there is no worse death than being burned alive’. This is what protected witness testifying at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic under the pseudonym VG-13 said explaining why she had decided to try to save herself and her 14-year old son by jumping out of the window of the house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad. Some 70 Muslims were set on fire and burned alive in that house on 14 June 1992.
In her evidence yesterday, the witness recounted the events that led to the massacre. Today VG-13 described in detail the living pyre in the Pionirska Street. The carpets in one of the rooms in Adem Omeragic’s house were ‘sticky and wet from some liquid’. An hour after they were locked in that house, she said, Milan Lukic showed up on the door, accompanied by Mitar Vasiljevic. Lukic threw an explosive device into the house. The carpets caught fire and the flames went ‘high up, as if they were there to keep God warm’, as she described.
Although the explosion injured her leg and her hand was on fire, VG-13 decided to throw her son out through the window first and then to jumped our herself and try to run away. As she was jumping out, a bullet hit her in the left shoulder, but she managed to hide in a creek nearby. From there she heard the ‘cries and sobbing’ from the house for some hours. She then moved to a sewer close by, where she remained for the next three days.
After three days with no food, water and sleep, she got out of the sewer. Her ‘wounds were infested with maggots’. She ate a ‘handful of green plums and an onion’ and managed to ‘creep’ to a Bosniak village not far away. That same evening, after receiving first aid, she continued on towards Gorazde ‘through the woods’, where she was finally hospitalized. Five months later, the witness learned that her son was alive but did not reunite with him until 1995. Her son testified at this trial earlier this week under the pseudonym VG-38.
Milan Lukic’s defense counsel insisted that VG-13 didn’t know Milan Lukic personally. Therefore, in his view, she could have wrongly identified him as the perpetrator under the influence of ‘widespread stories about his alleged crimes’. The witness replied she didn’t come to the Tribunal to accuse anyone but to speak the truth; it is up to the court to decide who is right and who is wrong.
Sredoje Lukic's defense counsel again claimed that his client had taken no part in this incident. In fact, Sredoje Lukic was not in Visegrad that day at all, he said. The witness admitted that she had not seen Sredoje Lukic, but other prisoners in the Pionirska Street house had said he had been there.
VG-32, one of the two Bosniaks who survived the execution on the Drina river bank near Visegrad on 7 June 1992 testifies at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic. As he identified Milan Lukic in the courtroom, the witness said that he 'remembered well his smile' before the execution on the river bank
Protected witness VG-32 is one of the two survivors from a group of seven Bosniaks executed, as alleged by the indictment, by the accused Milan Lukic and his accomplices on 7 June 1992 on the Drina river bank near Visegrad. The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic opened in July 2008 with the testimony of witness VG-14 who spoke about this event.
After a few weeks in Gorazde, the witness returned to Visegrad in early May 1992 because he had a work obligation in the local health care center. The witness moved to the house of his father-in-law; it was located near his workplace to avoid having to pass through numerous check points all over town. The situation was getting risky: 'Muslims were disappearing every day', he said.
In the afternoon of 7 June 1992, Milan Lukic and several armed men came to the house of his father-in-law. They took the witness and his friend to a nearby house where a number of captured Muslims – including a boy – were detained. After he took all of their valuables, Milan ordered four of them to come with him. A car with three other prisoners was waiting outside the house. They all drove to the Vilina Vlas hotel, where they were joined by Mitar Vasiljevic. Vasiljevic, Milan Lukic's best man, is currently serving a 15-year sentence for his part in this crime.
They left the hotel and headed towards the Drina River. When they got close to the river bank, Milan lined them up facing the water and ordered his companions to open fire at the prisoners. 'I felt a flicker of hope', VG-32 said describing the moments when he jumped in the river before he was hit and a body of another victim fell on top of him. When he heard the attackers leaving, VG-32 realized that another man had survived the execution without injuries. The two of them remained in the water for some time and then took shelter in the bushes. When the night fell, they swam across the river 'holding to a tree stump'.
VG-32 also gave evidence about his encounter with witness VG-114 several days after she managed to escape from the house set on fire in the Bikavac neighborhood. Milan and Sredoje Lukic are also indicted for this crime. The state VG-114 was in when they met ‘went beyond the worst horror movie’, he said. Her face was burned beyond recognition and the wounds in her hands were 'full of maggots'. In its opening statement the prosecution indicated that witness VG-114 would be testifying without protective measures. VG-114 wanted to describe how it felt 'to be burned alive' and to look Milan Lukic, her schoolmate, 'who did this to her' in the eye as she told her tale.
In the cross-examination, Milan Lukic's defense counsel continued with his mistaken identity strategy: he claims the witness mistakenly identified the accused because he didn’t know him personally. According to the defense counsel, the information the witness had about the accused were based on rumors. The witness rejected this argument saying that the person sitting in the courtroom was Milan Lukic who took him to the execution site on 7 June 1992 and 'whose smile he remembered very well'.
Mother and son who managed to escape the living pyre in the Pionirska Street on 14 June 1992 gave evidence at the trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, charged with crimes committed in Visegrad. The witnesses recounted how they were humiliated before the house in which they were shut in together with some 70 other Bosniak prisoners was set on fire. Only seven of them survived
Two survivors of the massacre in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad, mother and son testifying under the pseudonyms VG-18 and VG-84 gave evidence about what happened on 14 June 1992 when some 70 Bosniaks from the village of Koritnik were burned alive in a house in the Pionirska Street in Visegrad.
VG-84 was barely 14 years-old when he was shut in a house in the Pionirska Street together with his mother and about 70 of his neighbors. In his brief examination-in chief by the prosecutor he said that there were some fifteen other children in the house, including a two-day old baby. He couldn't imagine that he would 'burn in flames' at the age of fourteen; he 'played until the very last moment'.
In his replies to the defense counsel of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, the witness confirmed that he didn't know the two accused before that day. He had heard their names from older people who recognized them when they came to the house to take away their 'money and gold'. In his words, when the JNA had left Visegrad, 'everybody was scared' when the names of Milan and Sredoje Lukic were mentioned. The rumor had it that they go around Muslim villages 'burning down houses and taking men away'. The witness was not able to identify them in the courtroom because, as he put it, he was 'too young to be able to clearly remember faces'.
In the part of her evidence given in public session, VG-18, housewife from the village of Koritnik and mother of witness VG-84 talked about the humiliation and abuse of captured women prior to the fire. Being forced to strip naked together with other women was, as she said, 'worse than death'. The witness said that in that afternoon Milan Lukic took two young girls away for several hours. When they returned, everybody was 'ashamed' to ask them what had happened, but everybody guessed that they had been raped.
'It hurts to know that my village is empty', the witness said at the end of her evidence. She was visibly upset. She said that ever since 14 June 1992 she had had problems 'with nerves and high blood pressure' every time she thought about this incident.
The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic will continue on Monday when the defense counsel will examine the witness VG-18.