Trial Continues in the Čemerno Case: Testimonies That Brought Nothing New

(Patria) - A new hearing in the case of “Džemal Hadžić and Others” held today at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina featured two
testimonies, but neither brought anything new.

The first witness, Mirsad (Fadila) Bešlija, recently underwent a serious heart surgery, and the Trial Chamber, prosecutor, and defense attorneys spared him from unnecessary questions. Nevertheless, he briefly explained that at the beginning of the war events, he and his neighbors kept village guards, with no one commanding or deploying them, but rather they agreed among themselves, and that they only had personal and hunting weapons. The unit – the TO Korita company – was formed only in July, when he also joined it. He confirmed that the commander of that unit at the time was another Mirsad Bešlija.

Regarding the events in the village of Čemerno on June 10, 1992, he said he did not participate in it and knew nothing about its planning. He described seeing a column of twenty to thirty soldiers moving past his house, but he did not know who they were or where they were going.

That morning, he was on guard with three other neighbors, and around 5 a.m. they heard gunfire from the direction of Čemerno, but they did not know what was happening. He learned about what happened in Čemerno from the media, primarily from SRNA, because no one in the village talked about it. Prosecutor Simović asked the witness to state what he heard from the media, which the defense attorneys interpreted as an attempt by the prosecutor to partly base the indictment on the witness's knowledge from statements by the Serbian news agency SRNA, which during the war was anything but an independent media outlet.

The second prosecution witness was Ismet Salčinović from Breza, who before the war and at the very beginning of the war events in Breza was the commander of the Territorial Defense. He held that position until May, when he was removed at his own request and replaced by Nehru Ganić. He then served as assistant commander for logistics. He also listed the other members of the TO Breza command and clarified which military formations existed at that time, emphasizing that initially they only had the maneuver detachment “Sretno” and one reconnaissance and sabotage platoon, and that the Plana and Župča detachments were formed only later.

When asked by Prosecutor Simović about the participation of units from other municipalities, the witness replied that he remembered one unit arriving from Kakanj, which he assumes was called by the commander of TO Ilijaš, Hašim Spahić, due to heavy fighting on the battlefield in Misoča. Part of that unit was sent to Misoča and the other to the village of Vlahinje near Breza.

He learned about the operation in Čemerno only in the morning from Šefket Hrustanović upon arriving at the headquarters, and then went with him to Commander Ganić, who told them that the operation itself was prepared in strict secrecy and that only a few knew about it. He confirmed what many witnesses have stated in previous testimonies, that the howitzers from Čemerno shelled Breza, and he named several individuals who were killed by them. As in the previous hearing, Prosecutor Simović asked the witness who was responsible for punishing soldiers for committed crimes and received an almost identical answer: “There were no crimes – there were no punishments either.”

Interesting was also the part of Salčinović's testimony in which he described how, just before the war, he received an order from the then TO BiH to hand over all weapons of TO Breza to the JNA, which they did, leaving them completely disarmed.

Equally interesting is the fact that on the day he gave his statement to SIPA in 2017, his sister died, and he decided to finish giving the statement, but due to stress, he did not read it but only signed it. The defense noted that the record states that the witness both read and signed the statement.

Prosecutor Simović requested that the statements of both witnesses be entered into the case file due to contradictions, which the Trial Chamber accepted, while the defense attorneys objected on the grounds of legality and relevance. The trial continues on November 30 with the testimony of one witness.

(S. Spahić)