Čemerno Case: Another Witness with Only Indirect Knowledge, Prosecutor Asked to Stop This Practice

(Patria) - Another hearing before the Court of BiH in the case of Džemal Hadžić and others" (Čemerno) brought the testimony of a person who could only speak indirectly about this case. In this case, it was Prosecution witness Zaim Bešlija, who, in response to questions from prosecutor Vladimir Simović, described the situation in the village of Korita before and at the very beginning of the war events in that part of the Ilijaš municipality.

He explained that the Korita company was formed only at the end of July 1992, and until then, the locals had been carrying out village guards on their own initiative and by agreement, mostly with hunting weapons. Regarding the event of June 10, 1993, he only had indirect knowledge from his brother Refik, who lived in the Serbian village of Karaula, because his wife was Serbian.

"Because of that, the neighbors in Korita didn't trust either him or me, so I wasn't involved in that action in any way" – witness Bešlija stated at the time.

He described that he was guarding livestock the day before the action, and that, passing by the school, he saw some soldiers inside, but he didn't know who they were, where they were from, or why they were there. In the morning, he heard shooting from the direction of Čemerno, from where smoke was also visible. From the stories of others, he learned that the goal of the attack was to destroy howitzers, whose actions he had heard in the previous days and which had shelled Breza, Visoko, and surrounding settlements.

His brother Refik conveyed stories about the victims, which he heard from Serbian neighbors, and that is all his knowledge, which he does not want to talk about because he was not present and saw none of it with his own eyes. Therefore, he could not speak about the participants of the action itself. This time too, prosecutor Vladimir Simović insisted on the facts from the statement the witness gave to SIPA in 2017, trying to highlight the differences between what was in the statement and this testimony, to which Bešlija replied that he was completely confused when giving the statement because there were "raised voices".

He also said that he did not read the statement but signed it. Prosecutor Simović reacted by claiming that the statement was read to him, but during the defense's examination, the witness confirmed that this happened only this morning, not on the day the statement was taken in 2017. Responding to the defense's questions, Bešlija also said that his brother had warned him not to go in the direction of Čemerno because there was armed military patrolling there.

Another witness was scheduled for today but did not appear due to illness, so prosecutor Simović read the statement of witness Mustafa Bešlija, who has since passed away. At the time of giving the statement, this witness was 81 years old, and he did not sign this statement because he was illiterate, so only his initials were written in the spaces intended for signatures. The presiding judge of the Trial Chamber, Minka Kreho, reacted to this, stating that the witness's level of education was not indicated on the previous statement, as well as on others before it.

The defense also claimed that it was obvious that the witness was illiterate and that the statement should therefore have been recorded, but that even for all 102 witnesses, there is not a single audio recording.

The defense of the accused raised an objection to the legality and authenticity of the statement, as it is obvious that the witness was illiterate and the statement was written in a way as if an academically educated person was giving it.

The defense also stated that the presentation of witnesses with indirect knowledge only burdens and prolongs the process itself, given that there is a sufficient number of witnesses who participated in the event at Čemerno. Judge Kreho accepted this remark and advised prosecutor Simović to try to shorten it, which he promised to do.

The trial continues on October 19, when two witnesses are expected to appear.

(S.Spahić)