Mirzet Karabeg, witness at the Radovan Karadzic trial

Mirzet Karabeg, former president of the Sanski Most Executive Board said at the trial of Radovan Karadzic that the municipality president Nedjeljko Rasula was the key figure in the effort to ‘destroy’ the good neighborly relations and co-existence of Serbs, Muslims and Croats who had been living in the municipality until the summer of 1992.

The final goal of the division policy advocated and implemented by Rasula, as the SDS candidate, was to reduce the percentage of Muslims and Croats in Sanski Most to no more than 10 percent. The goal was eventually accomplished as the number of non-Serbs in the municipality fell from 28,000 at the beginning of the war to only 575 in October 1995.

According to the witness, some Serbs in Sanski Most were ‘in favor of BH’. They did not speak their minds in public because radical Serbs threatened to throw bombs into their houses and apartments.

The transcript of Karabeg’s evidence at the trial of Radoslav Brdjanin and Momir Talic in 2002 was admitted into evidence; the witness described in detail the attacks on non-Serb property that started in September 1991 and the Serb plans to divide the municipality along the ethnic line. The witness also spoke about the five months he had spent as a prisoner, first in the prison in Sanski Most, then in a garage of the Betonirka company and finally in the Manjaca prison camp.

As he was beaten on one occasion in the Betonirka company, the witness was kicked in the head and lost all his teeth. The witness described how one day Sulejmen Sales was brought to the Betonirka with his three sons. A Serb guard by the name of Simo Simetic kept one of the sons in front of the garage and forced his head through a closed door. Before the war, Simetic was regarded as a ‘fine person’ with a sense of humor.

In the cross-examination, Karadzic repeated once again his argument that the SDA had been secretly preparing for the war and that the Green Berets units had existed in every municipality. Contrary to the ‘illegal’ arming of Muslims, Serbs relied on the JNA. According to Karadzic, Serbs knew about those plans and knew that Muslims were getting weapons, and this prompted them to set up check points in Sanski Most and other municipalities, to check the non-Serbs.

‘You now want to say that we did those things that you were doing’, the witness replied. The witness wanted Karadzic to tell him ‘how many Serbs were killed in Sanski Most, and how many Croats and Muslims’.

Karadzic will continue his cross-examination of Mirzet Karabeg tomorrow.

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