Dudaković and Others: Information About Aunt's Death

(Patria) - At the trial of Atif Dudaković, former commander of the Fifth Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH), the first prosecution witness described how her brother and aunt went missing in Bosanski Petrovac, who were exhumed in 1999.

Daliborka Vržina said she was a member of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and worked at the Air Surveillance Center in Bosanski Petrovac, where she lived in a rented apartment with her sister, while her brother, parents, and sick aunt Bosiljka Vržina lived in the village of Bjelaj.

The witness says that on September 14, 1995, the lines were breached and the army withdrew towards Lušci-Palanka, that the population fled headlong, while on the same day a neighbor told her parents to do the same, but they came to Bosanski Petrovac by horse-drawn cart, BIRN reports.

“They came to the rented apartment where I was living, thinking that the army and population would leave in an organized manner. When my father went outside on September 15 and saw that ‘Novitet’ was burning, he realized something was happening, and he and my mother left Petrovac, while the sick aunt stayed in the apartment,” the witness recounts, adding that she met up with her parents seven to eight days later in Banja Luka.

She learned, according to her words, that her brother Borislav Vržina went missing on September 14, 1995, and was exhumed in 1999, along with her aunt, about whom they received information from a neighbor, Milka Prpa.

“Milka voluntarily stayed. When she later met with my parents, she said she had been captured. She was also asked about my aunt and said that she was found dead in that house where we were living,” the witness says.

Answering cross-examination questions from the Defense, the witness stated that a pathologist told her that the time of her aunt’s death was mid-September 1995.

Regarding the Defense’s claim that the company “Novitet” was burning if it immediately resumed production, the witness says she heard about it from her father, and that her brother was a VRS member and had been mobilized.

In addition to Dudaković, former members of the Fifth Corps Ekrem Dedić, Sanel Šabić, Ibrahim Šiljdedić, Safet Salihagić, Adis Zjakić, Hasan Ružnić, Redžep Zlojić, Samir Solaković, Fatmir Muratović, Muharem Alešević, Husein Balagić, Edin Domazet, Ejub Konježić, Ibrahim Nadarević, and Said Mujić are charged with crimes against humanity committed in the municipalities of Bosanski Petrovac, Ključ, Bosanska Krupa, and Sanski Most, and surrounding villages, including the murders of more than 300 people, persecution, and destruction of religious buildings.

The indictment also charges Dudaković with crimes committed against victims of Bosniak ethnicity, members and supporters of the People's Defense of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia (NOAPZB), during the conflict in the Cazinska Krajina region, in the municipalities of Bihać and Cazin.

The trial continues on May 20.