Hadzihasanovic Prosecution Rests

Prosecution lawyers in the trial of two high-ranking Bosnian army commanders rested their case this week with the testimony of a former Croatian soldier who spoke of beatings and killings in Bugojno's Iskra Stadium.

Bosnian Croat Vinko Zrno - testifying in the trial of former general Enver Hadzihasanovic and ex-colonel Amir Kubura - had been working as a guard at a Croatian Defence Council, HVO, military hospital in Bugojno in early 1993.

Hadzihasanovic, who commanded the Bosnian army's Third Corps, and Kubura, who led the corps' Seventh Muslim Bridge, are accused of superior criminal responsibility for seven and six counts respectively of violations of the laws of customs of war.

These include the murder of Bosnian Croat and Serb civilians and the killing of captured non-Muslim prisoners of war, as well as the inhumane treatment of detainees. They deny the charges.

During the examination in chief by prosecution counsel Tecla Henry-Benjamin, Zrno told the court that he had been among a group who surrendered to the predominantly Muslim Bosnian Muslim as it pushed through Central Bosnia, and was detained in a series of makeshift prisons in the following months.

The witness claimed conditions were poor, and that beatings at the hands of their Bosnian army captors were commonplace. Things did not improve when Zrno and his fellow detainees were moved to a new holding area - the local Iskra football club's stadium - in the summer of 1993.

"There was intimidation and terror all the time," he told the court, adding that he and his fellow non-Muslim prisoners were regularly organised into forced labour parties and beaten by the Bosnian soldiers.

On one occasion, Zrno told the court he was repeatedly struck while digging graves, and that a relative captured at the same time as him died from injuries he received in a beating.

Under questioning by defence counsel Edina Residov, the witness confirmed that the uniforms worn by the soldiers carrying out the beatings had carried the insignia of the Bosnian army.

After being exchanged on March 19, 1994, Zrno was taken to Mostar - divided into Croat and Muslim sections at the time - where he was reunited with his wife and children, who had fled there as refugees.

He spent around a month and a half in Mostar recuperating from his ordeal, he told the court, before receiving an offer of employment from a relative in Zagreb. His family relocated to Croatia, where they have lived ever since.

When asked by the court whether he had ever considered returning to central Bosnia, the witness replied emphatically, "Never - they [the Bosnian army] had broken my spirit."

Zrno was the last witness to be called by the prosecution, which is expected to formally close its case on July 23.

Earlier this week, lawyers on both sides of the chamber - together with the panel of judges - discussed a general framework for the remainder of the trial, which suggests that a pre-defence conference could be held on October 8, with the first defence witnesses appearing some three days later.

Alison Freebairn is an IWPR editor in The Hague.