Eset Muracevic, witness at the Radovan Karadzic trial

Continuing the cross-examination of Eset Muracevic, Radovan Karadzic put it to him that the people who were killed in Vogosca were BH Army soldiers who ‘died in combat’, not civilians. Karadzic corroborated this claim by comparing two lists: one that the witness provided to the OTP and the list Karadzic got from the Republika Srpska Center for War Crime Research.

Muracevic said that Karadzic’s list contains the names of persons who had managed to confirm their service in the armed forces in this way or that. The people on his list, Muracevic explained, were the detainees in the Vogosca area who were killed as ‘unarmed prisoners’ and not as soldiers. As the witness noted, their families probably managed to confirm somehow that they had actually served in the armed forces.

Karadzic then asked Muracevic a series of questions about his stay in the detention facility called Bunker in Vogosca. Bunker was located across the road from the Kon Tiki pension, also known as Sonja’s house. In a statement, the witness said the first UNPROFOR commander in Sarajevo, Canadian Lewis MacKenzie, visited Sonja's house. Karadzic accused Muracevic of being ‘the source of intrigues against a distinguished and honorable general’. The media in BH claimed that in the Sonja restaurant Serbs made underage Muslim girls have sex with MacKenzie. Muracevic confirmed he saw MacKenzie there. The witness also said that ‘Serb representatives’ Borislav Herak and Sretko Damjanovic and other persons detained with him spoke about MacKenzie’s visits to Sonja's house.

In the re-examination, the prosecutor revisited Karadzic’s allegation that somebody had prepared the witness for his testimony. Karadzic based his claim on the fact that Muracevic quoted the accused as saying he would not allow Serbs to sell their property to Muslims and that ‘all Muslim foundations will be blown up’. Karadzic claimed he said that at a secret party meeting, when he recounted his threats to Alija Izetbegovic. According to Karadzic, the threat that ‘the foundations will be blown up’ concerned the Muslims from Turkey, whom Izetbegovic allegedly intended to settle in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Karadzic didn’t mean ‘local Muslims’. The witness replied he couldn’t speculate which Muslims the accused had meant.

According to the prosecution’s schedule, Mehmed Music from the village of Musici in the Hadzici municipality will begin his evidence tomorrow. In 1992, Music went through several detention facilities, including the barracks in Lukavica, the police station in Ilidza and the prison in Kula.

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