Four Prosecution witnesses tell the Court that they lost their parents in Mesici and Kukavice villages, near Rogatica, in July 1992.
Devla Suso said that the attack by “the Serb armies” on Kukavice village, where she lived, began on July 9, 1992, adding that she “left my parents at home”, while she found shelter at the Center in Kukavice.
“The attack lasted for two days. Then they started setting the houses on fire. (…) After hiding in the woods for a few days, I managed to flee. It was not until twenty days later that I found out what had happened to my parents. Hamdo Bajic and Aziz Suso told me they had found them and Jusuf Makas dead,” Suso said.
The State Prosecution charges Stojan Perkovic, former squad commander with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, in Ladjevine village, Rogatica Municipality, with crimes committed in Rogatica Municipality in 1992.
The indictment alleges that, in July 1992 Perkovic led an attack on Kukavice, Kujundzijevici and Mesici villages, when a number of civilians were killed, while their houses were set on fire and their property looted.
Witness Suso said that “the village residents said” that Perkovic took away and beat up their neighbour Nurija Kujovic and he was “the boss in Ladjevine”.
At this hearing Hamdo Bajic also testified. He confirmed that the attack on Kukavice and Kujundzijevici villages began on July 9, 1992, adding that he “joined about 1,000 Bosniak residents, who fled to Brcidol” after the attack.
“Twenty days later I came back with a group of people, as we wanted to see what had happened to the people who had stayed in the villages. Me and Aziz Suso saw Makas Jusuf and Nura and Ahmo Suso in a stream. Their bodies had started decaying, but we saw bullet wounds. We just covered them with leaves and branches,” he said.
The third Prosecution witness who testified at this hearing, Ata Cutahija, saw her father Jusuf Makas for the last time in 1991. She said other people told her in 1992 “that he was found dead in Kukavice village. His head had been cut off”.
Witness Ziba Ajnadzic happened to be in her house in Mesici village when the attack began on July 9, 1992. She lived in the house with her father-in-law, Ismet, and her mother-in- law, Naila Ajnadzic.
“That morning airplanes started bombing our village. We all ran out of our houses. I ran away and I never went back. My father-in-law and mother-in-law stayed behind. They were old and could not walk. This was where their life ended,” Ajnadzic said.
The witness told the Court she left Mesici village that day, adding that her parents Nura and Osman Dzindo had stayed there.
“I met my father in Gorazde about a month later. He told me that my mother and the Bajraktarevic neighbours had been killed by Serb soldiers. She was hiding in the school building in the village, while he was in the woods. He saw them being taken away to the wire bridge and then he heard shooting,” Ajnadzic said.
Suada Garagic, who testified as the fifth Prosecution witness at this hearing, said that, in July 1992 she fled from Mesici village. Later she found out that her mother, Nezira Bajraktervic, was found dead “by the wire bridge in Mesici village”.
The date for the next hearing was not determined due to other “engagements of the Trial Chamber”. The date will be set at a later stage.