Serb Women Defend Accused in Sex-Slaves Trial

At the start of the defence case in the trial of Bosnian Serb officer Gojko Jankovic last week, three Serb women from the eastern Bosnian town of Foca told the judges that some of the alleged victims were not his “sex-slaves”, as they had claimed in court.



They also testified that two alleged victims, both Muslim girls, protected witnesses 191 and 95, described the accused to them as a “hero”, not a rapist and a torturer.



Gojko Janković, 53, is a former member of the Bosnian Serb military police in Foca. He was originally indicted by the Hague tribunal in 1996, together with five other accused, for war crimes allegedly committed in Foca in 1992, including rape, torture and enslavement.



Jankovic’s three co-accused Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic have already been convicted, sentenced to 28, 20 and 12 years in prison respectively, in February 2001. Two others, Dragan Gagovic and Janko Janjic, died during NATO troops’ attempts to arrest them, in 1999 and 2000 respectively.



Jankovic’s case was referred to the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber in July 2005, and ten months later, on April 21 this year, his trial began in Sarajevo.



Charges against him include multiple rapes of women, girls and young girls at various locations, and the expulsion and murder of the non-Serb civilian population. According to the indictment, over a period of a few months, Jankovic held captive and repeatedly raped four Bosniak girls - the youngest only 12-years-old, the others aged 14, 16 and 25.



Jankovic pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.



During the prosecution phase of the trial earlier this year, two protected witnesses, 191 and 95, described in court how they were taken from their homes in eastern Bosnia by Serb forces in 1992 and brought to Foca, where they were allegedly held as sex slaves by Jankovic and his men.



“For me, the sexual intercourse lasted forever,” said witness 95. “Today I can’t have children. I cry all the time and have terrible nightmares.”



But, according to defence witness Radmila Susnjevic, a Serb medical worker from Foca who lived in the same apartment block as protected witnesses 95 and 191, the two were free to go whenever they wanted.



However, she told the Sarajevo court last week that she never asked the girls what happened to them or how they got there, because “as a woman and a mother, I found that too disturbing”.



Another defence witness who testified in Sarajevo last week was Branka Pavkovic. She said she became good friends with witness 191 during the war, adding she knew the girl was a Muslim but, just like Susnjevic, she never discussed any upsetting details from her friend’s life.



“We mostly talked about ordinary, everyday things,” she told the court.



The third witness who took the stand last week, Sanja Kulic, also a Serb woman from Foca, who claims she knew both Muslim victims personally, told the judges her impression was that the girls were free to leave the town whenever they wanted. But she also added that witness 191 told her she was raped by Kunarac more than 20 times before she was brought to Foca.



Over the last few months of Jankovic trial, the court has heard a number of Muslim women testify that they were captured, enslaved and gang raped by Jankovic and his men.



Most appeared as protected witnesses, or their testimonies were read out in court, because they were too afraid to appear personally.



Protected witness 75 said she could remember only one night during eight months of her detention in Foca that she wasn’t raped. She said there were times when she was sexually assaulted by 20 men in a single night.



Protected witness 192 told the court her underage daughter was also among several girls who were taken away from the Foca sports centre, where all Muslim women had been detained, by Jankovic and his men. She said that when her daughter finally returned days later, she told her she was raped by Jankovic and Kunarac, “but we never discussed the details”.



Protected witness 186 was only 12 at the time she was allegedly raped by Jankovic. According to the indictment and her own statement, Jankovic picked her out “as his own sex slave”. She claimed the accused told her he would be the only one who would have the right to rape her in the future.



The witness said she knew Jankovic had a wife and 3 children in Montenegro, one of whom was an 11-year-old girl. She said she had asked him once how he could rape someone who is almost the same age as his own daughter.



“That made him very angry, and I was too afraid to insist on an answer,” said the witness.



The trial will resume on November 8, when four more witnesses will testify in Jankovic’s defence.



Denis Dzidic is an IWPR contributor.