Eurasia Press & News
A witness told the war crimes trial of Bosnian Serb ex-soldier Vitomir Rackovic that her sister said that she and others were raped by Serb fighters in the Visegrad area in 1992.
The protected prosecution witness codenamed RV-10 told the Sarajevo court on Wednesday that she was in the village of Bikavac bear Visegrad when a group of Serb soldiers came up and ordered the women to leave with them.
“I headed off with the child, and one soldier brought me back to leave my child… While I was leaving my things, I heard the car start and they left,” said the witness.
Her sister was among the women who were taken away, she said.
“They were crying when they came back. When my mother-in-law asked [another protected witness in the trial codenamed] RV-4 where they were, what they did and who took them, RV-4 said that Vito Rackovic took them to Crnca to buy grain,” she added.
She said that her sister only told her last year that she was raped when the Serbs took them away, and had not spoken about it before because she felt ashamed.
Rackovic, a former serviceman with the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with having participated in attacks on Bosniak villages, detentions, torture, the forced disappearances of people from the Visegrad area and rape in the period from May to the end of August 1992.
Another protected witness also testified on Wednesday, saying that she was living in the village of Kabernik with her family at the beginning of the war, when several men came to take her husband and son away.
“They chased me down the meadow and forced me to find my son. He showed up that moment. I said: ‘Leave him’… My son was arrested, tied up and thrown on the truck,” she recalled.
She said that she did not see the defendant Rackovic that day, but that she did see him the day afterwards. The bodies of her dead husband and son were later exhumed, she said.
Another witness, Nermina Mulaomerovic, also said that she was living in Kabernik in 1992, when her husband and father-in-law were taken away, and that their bodies were found in the Zepa area.
“My husband is gone. It means nothing to me if they are going to be convicted. My youth has gone… my child… We are all ruined,” Mulaomerovic said, crying as she gave her testimony.
According to Rackovic’s indictment, some of the people that he illegally arrested were never seen again, and the bodies of some of the civilians who he arrested were exhumed in 2000 in the Zepa municipality.
The trial continues on May 21.
