Police officers in Zvornik beat a Bosniak man for refusing to sign a false confession

(Patria) - Nasir Alić reported a police officer for attempting to force him to sign a statement he did not give and to confess to a crime he says he could not have committed because he was not in the country, through threats, blackmail, and beatings during an interrogation at the Zvornik police station. He is now unable to work due to his injuries and fears losing his job in Croatia while awaiting the results of an internal and criminal investigation into another similar case in the Zvornik region within just a few months, writes Detektor.

When two police officers knocked on the door of Jasmin Alić's family home in Klisa, a village between Sapna and Zvornik, in the evening in mid-July and asked for his twenty-two-year-old son Nasir, he didn't know what it was about but worried about his son, who had been working in the Croatian city of Labin for two years. The officers told Jasmin that Nasir had to report to the Zvornik police station to give a statement as a witness.

He says they threatened to issue an arrest warrant for his son if he didn't show up.

Nasir's statement did not please the two police inspectors

Nasir took time off work and two days later gave his statement at the police station. But Ali says that the two police inspectors did not like it and gave him another statement to sign, which was not his.

“Then he stood up and slapped me twice and asked, ‘Do you want it the hard way or the easy way?’ I said, ‘The easy way, but as it should be.’ He said, ‘Then sign!’”, says Nasir, adding that he refused to sign the statement.

“Then he stood up again, hit me in the head with his fist, and I hit my head against the wall. I got up again and told him I wouldn't sign anything and that he could hit me until morning. But I won't sign anything because I'm not guilty of anything! I asked for a polygraph, he said he couldn't do it,” he adds.

Nasir told reporters that the inspectors asked him to confess to breaking into a house. He refused, for which he received several more blows with his fists. He says the inspectors asked him to shift the blame to someone else and to call that person.

“I said I wasn't involved and that I wasn't interested. Then he grabbed me by the neck and said, ‘Either you call, or we'll keep you for 48 hours, you won't get out.’ I said, ‘Keep me, but I won't call or frame anyone.’ I stood up, he hit me in the stomach with his fist,” recalls Nasir, who had already been at the station for over an hour at that point.

“What, can’t you hit harder?”

“Then I straightened up and said to him, ‘What, can’t you hit harder?’ Then he knocked me to the floor, kicked me twice in the back. I barely got up and sat on a chair,” says Nasir, adding that the inspectors continued to hit and slap him while he was sitting on the chair.

He says that another inspector was in the office the whole time, who slapped Nasir two or three times during the interrogation. He stayed at the station for a full three hours.

“Then he said, ‘Come with me.’ I stood up, started to move, he grabbed me by the neck and said, ‘Be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, don’t make me look for you. If I have to look for you, you’ll fare worse than you did now’,” says Nasir.

When he came home that night, his mother, he says, lost consciousness when she saw the injuries on his face. Jasmin says his son's nose was broken and he had bruises on his face. He immediately took him to the Sapna Health Center, from where they sent him to the University Clinical Center in Tuzla. He vomited twice from nausea on the way. In Tuzla, after a surgeon's examination, he was diagnosed with bodily injuries to his head, spine, abdomen, and chest, according to documentation that Detektor journalists had access to.

“When I got home, I couldn't sleep all night. I’d lie down, and I’d keep thinking someone was next to me. I wasn't at ease,” says Nasir.

Father went to the station to report the officers to internal affairs

His father says that the inspector called him again that night and told him he had to come to the station in the morning. Instead of his son, he went to the station to report the officers to internal affairs.

“I couldn’t tolerate them beating my child. If he were guilty, I would say ‘he’s guilty, take him away’. But he’s not guilty! My child works honestly, comes here for five or six days, lives there, we barely see him, he works all day and night, and here they beat him over some statement they’re trying to force on him,” says Jasmin.

He adds that the internal affairs inspector told him that Nasir had to come at one o’clock with a lawyer and give a statement, and that no one would question him further.

Nasir's lawyer, Senad Šmigalović, says he has filed a criminal complaint against the inspectors for dereliction of duty and abuse of position, as well as a complaint to internal affairs against the officers for their conduct.

“We have submitted medical documentation as evidence. Now the Prosecutor's Office should engage an expert witness to determine the degree of injuries, whether they are minor or severe, and to direct the course of the investigation. Such decisions and legal qualifications are up to the prosecutor,” explains Šmigalović.

Complaint for unlawful conduct

The Zvornik Police Administration confirmed to Detektor that they received a report against a police officer for unlawful conduct during the taking of a statement from N.A. from Zvornik on July 17 this year regarding a criminal offense of “aggravated theft” committed in June.

Zvornik Police Station

They explain that they informed the District Public Prosecutor's Office in Bijeljina, but also initiated an internal procedure by the Service for Integrity Protection and Legality in Work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS.

The administration did not respond to Detektor's request for an interview with the accused inspector or someone from the Zvornik Police Administration regarding this case. The Alićs say they received information that both officers have been suspended. Detektor could not officially confirm this information.

The day before Detektor journalists visited Klisa, Jasmin says, two police officers knocked on the Alićs' door again. They did not identify themselves, nor did they show their official IDs, he explains. They told them they had warrants to arrest Nasir and search the house.

“They showed a warrant to search the house, they entered, searched everything, and found nothing. I was standing by the car. One of them told me they had a court order to arrest me for the report. I said, ‘How do you have the right to arrest me when I haven't done anything?’ They said they did, but that we would come to an agreement so they wouldn't arrest me, and I would withdraw the lawsuit, and they wouldn't bother me. I said, ‘That’s not going to happen, I won’t withdraw the lawsuits’,” says Nasir.

Lawyer: Nasir can no longer withdraw the complaint

His lawyer says that Nasir can no longer withdraw the complaint.

“The moment Nasir filed the complaint, it’s no longer up to him. It is forwarded to the District Public Prosecutor's Office, and further decisions on that complaint are made by the acting prosecutor who is assigned the case. No one will ask Nasir whether he will testify or not. He is obliged to testify what he gave in the record at the Zvornik police station,” explains Šmigalović.

Currently, four other members of the Zvornik Police Administration from Osmak, near Klisa, are on trial for beating a minor during an interrogation at the police station, which Detektor reported on in detail. They pleaded not guilty in the Basic Court in Zvornik, and the trial is scheduled to begin in September.

The head of the Zvornik Police Administration, Aleksandar Vasiljević, said in a telephone conversation with Detektor that he is on vacation and cannot speak about the complaint, adding that such cases do not only happen in Zvornik.

Nasir says he thought there was no need to hire a lawyer when he went to the police station to give a statement as a witness. Due to the pain he endured, he is experiencing consequences and cannot return to work.

“I have problems with my spine and stomach. I can’t eat, I eat little, and I can’t sit or drive for long, my back hurts. I was given two days off and I can’t go back. Now I can easily lose my job, no one will wait for me to come back to work,” says Nasir.