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Karajic: Torture of detainees

09 October 2008  A Prosecution witness speaks about his meetings with Suljo Karajic and the days he spent in detention.

Prosecution witness Mirsad Cuturic was wounded and captured for the first time as a member of the National Defence of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region, ND WBAR, in June 1994. In September he was released from the prison. At that time he still walked with crutches. At the end of the year he was captured again.

The indictment alleges that, in December 1994 Suljo Karajic ordered others to take away and detain civilians from Todorovska Slapnica, in Velika Kladusa municipality, who, he thought, supported the ND WBAR.

Suljo Karajic was a member of the Bosnian Army. The indictment, filed by the Prosecution charges him with murder, abuse and unlawful detention of civilians, who were ND WBAR members or who, according to Karajic, were suspected of having supported the ND WBAR.

Cuturic recalled that, on the day he was captured in Slapnica, Karajic came to his house. He said that he was "dressed in white camouflage uniform and he carried a gun. His left arm was immobilised".

As indicated by the witness, he did not know Karajic, but he recognised him, because other people had told him that his arm was immobilised. The witness said that, after having captured him, Karajic beat him up, "hitting me on my head with a police baton". He claims that the beating lasted for more than two hours.

Just before dawn, the soldiers took Cuturic to the school building in Slapnica.

"It was five or six a.m. In front of the school I saw three naked people, standing in snow," Cuturic recalled, adding that Karajic forced them to pour water on them. The witness said that he was detained in a room, in which there was "a red hot furnace". The three men were brought there later on. They were all abused, in various ways, in that room.

Cuturic was detained, among other places, in the police station prison in Vrgorac for seven days. He said that he regularly saw Suljo Karajic during that time.

"He used to come there and take us out, as if he was going to shoot us. He would then ask us what our last wish was," the witness recalled.

After having been released, Cuturic returned to Slapnica. He then moved to Velika Kladusa. As of 2001 he has worked and lived in the United States, because, as he said, he could not find a job in Bosnian Krajina, where a division to "Abdic's supporters" and the others was still very much present.

Fikret Abdic was the architect and leader of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region. He is now in a prison in Croatia, whose citizenship he has got, serving a sentence for war crimes committed in Bosnia.

The Defence decided not to examine this witness, claiming that his statement was too lengthy and the Defence did not have enough time to prepare itself for the examination by the set deadline, i.e. Friday, October 10.