The first prosecution witness at the war crimes trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic described to a UN court yesterday how he saw Bosnian Serb forces bomb villages and slit prisoners’ throats.
Karadzic is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia on 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and violating the laws and customs of war stemming from the 1992-95 Bosnian war. When proceedings resumed after a six-week delay, prosecutors at the tribunal called their first witness, who testified about his detention at the Manjaca camp and killings in northwestern Bosnia around his town of Sanski Most.
Initially detained in June 1992 in a concrete garage with between 30 and 90 people, Ahmet Zulic said he was repeatedly beaten, suffering broken ribs and fractured vertebrae, before he was transported in “inhuman” conditions to a detention camp.
Mr Zulic said detainees were transported in a covered truck where exhaust fumes stifled the air and where he resorted to drinking his own urine because there was no water.
“I remember two brothers . . . it took them 10 minutes to die, which seemed to be an eternity. Others died silently because they did not have enough air,” he said.
Prosecutors say Karadzic led a genocidal campaign to make Bosnian Muslims “disappear from the face of the Earth” and carve out a mono-ethnic state for Bosnian Serbs during a war in which an estimated 100,000 people died.
Mr Zulic confirmed an earlier statement that he saw Bosnian Serb forces attack northern Bosnian villages with shelling, and saw them set houses on fire with artillery as prisoners were shot, forced to dig their own graves and had their throats cut. “Mr Zulic’s bed-ridden father-in-law was burned to death,” prosecutor Ann Sutherland said, noting attacks on two other villages where 300 people were killed.