Bosniak returnee fined 250 KM: "I told Dragiša he was a criminal and asked him why he beat me"

The court in Vlasenica fined a Bosniak, a former camp inmate, 250 KM because he called a person who abused him in the camp in 1994 a criminal.

Halil Bećirović confirmed to the bh. news agency Patria that in August this year he paid a fine of 250 KM because he called Dragiša Tešić, who abused him in the camp in Vlasenica during 1994, a criminal after they met in the city parking lot.

-We met in the parking lot in Vlasenica. I told him he was a criminal, and asked him why he beat me – Bećirović told Patria, adding that Tešić is a school friend of his brother and that it was even harder for him that he was his greatest abuser during his captivity.

The Army of Republika Srpska captured Bećirović in 1993 in Cerska, in eastern Bosnia, after which he was taken to the police prison in Vlasenica, which also served as a camp for Bosniak prisoners. Tešić served his sentence in the same prison for the murder of a Serb from Milići.

-That night in 1994, when Tešić was sentenced to almost nine years in prison for a murder he committed earlier, police officer Rajko Lošić and he came to my cell. They took me out to some room, where they beat me to the extent that my left leg eventually broke. They beat me for some more time, after which I lost consciousness and remember nothing else. I woke up in the cell, bloody and bruised – Bećirović recalled.

And in August this year, Bećirović was fined for calling Tešić a criminal after they met in the parking lot in Vlasenica. To Bećirović's remark that Tešić is indeed a criminal to him because he abused him in the camp, "the judge said that those were wartime circumstances".