WitnessTestifies About Abuse, Torture and Death in the Camps

Melika Malesevic is a survivor of a Croatian concentration camp. That experience led her to assist women refugees and to become involved in the Alliance of Detainees of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Alliance was established on August 25, 1996 to systematize information about former inmates of camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina, whatever their ethnicity.

Ms. Malesevic gave evidence to the Trial Chamber in the Milosevic case about the 651 camps in Bosnia her organization has documented to date. The Alliance’s records are based on lengthy questionnaires completed by survivors of the camps; each account is verified four times before it is accepted. Based on thousands of interviews, the Alliance has established that at least 100,000 people of all ethnicities, but primarily Bosnian Muslim, were detained in camps from 1992 to 1995. Other organizations have claimed there were 200,000. The “camps” consisted of any place where people were held en masse, and included school buildings, utility facilities and garages as well as prisons.

The witness told the Court that conditions in the camps were horrendous. In addition to starvation rations and lack of hygiene facilities, prisoners were subjected to 63 different forms of abuse. They were identified in Ms. Malesevic’s written statement, some of which Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice read out in court. They included: cutting off of heads, roasting a detainee on a spit, cutting off bodily parts with a chain saw, tearing off genitals, forcing detainees to tear off genitals of another detainee, forcing detainees to eat parts of bodies, inciting animals to massacre detainees, salting wounds, sexual maltreatment of men, women and children, taking out organs, and forcing detainees to eat feces. Ms. Malesevic testified that these witness and survivor accounts were verified by the Alliance.

Prosecutor Nice asked the witness to describe conditions and events at selected camps. There were mass killings and large scale rapes at a sand and gravel factory in Luka, she said. More mass killings occurred at a school in Bratunac, where body parts and dead bodies with crosses cut into them were found. In three days, more than 300 people were killed there and their corpses burned in containers in the school yard. At another camp, a survivor reported that men were serially raped. Eight fathers and sons were called out, forced to climb on a stage and strip, then perform various kinds of sexual abuse on one another. Afterwards, they were ordered to bite off penises and the three who refused were sentenced to death. One man had to hold another while he was stabbed repeatedly with a knife; he was forced to lick off the blood after each stab of the knife.

Added to these descriptions of horror were photographs of men in extreme states of emaciation. Ms. Malesevic testified that the majority of victims whose stories have been verified by the Alliance were Bosniaks, just as the vast majority of camps (520 of 651) were Serb controlled.

On cross examination, Milosevic scorned both Ms. Malesevic’s personal experience in a Croatian camp and her testimony about the existence of Serb-controlled camps, which, he said, “made monsters” of the Serbs. He countered her testimony with information obtained by his associates to the effect that a number of the named camps didn’t exist. In an attempt to discredit her, the accused asked her to name individuals in selected camps. Without the Alliance’s records, she was unable to do so. However, Mr. Nice elicited her consent to research and provide the information to the Court at a later date.

Milosevic also tried to play a version of his numbers game with her. She’d testified that 2000 to 2500 people were detained in the camp at Kresevo where she was an inmate. Stating that the town had a total population of 2500 Muslims, he pointed out that all of them would have had to have been in prison. “Most were,” she replied, “But there were a lot of refugees.”

The accused pressed her on the lack of information about Serb detainees and Muslim-run camps in her testimony. She responded that the Alliance continued to gather information, and that they had recently formed relationships with ethnically Serb organizations of camp detainees to exchange information. To Milosevic’s claim that there were 420 Muslim run camps in which Serbs were detained, Ms. Malesevic said she was unaware of that. “We should complete our task together. It would be a step toward reconciliation.”

Milosevic also attempted to discredit Ms. Malesevic and the Alliance by asking how many Serbs were members. On re-examination, Mr. Nice asked if there was any reason for the Alliance to break down its membership by the ethnicity of those who suffered, given that it was a multi-ethnic organization. “No. I don’t think there is,” she responded.

On cross examination, the amicus, Mr. Branislav Tapuskovic, asked the witness if she had photographs of the physical abuse and torture reported by survivors, such as the tearing off of genitals by criminals. Mrs. Malesvic responded incredulously, “How could you have a photograph?” Though she said that the material evidence of abuse and torture was the consequences on the victims’ bodies, as well as eye witness statements, Mr. Tapuskovic pressed her to admit the Alliance did not have “a single photo to corroborate” the stories.

On re-examination, however, Prosecutor Nice clarified what Mr. Tapuskovic had confused: that detainees were not in a position to take photographs when the crimes were committed; the crimes were committed “far from public eyes;” that the witness could obtain photographs of old injuries, and that, in the majority of cases, medical reports are included with the cases.

From the cross examination, it sometimes appears Milosevic forgets who his audience should be. Attempts to discredit a witness by trickery and manipulation rarely fool a panel of professional judges. It is the manipulators who are discredited by their own actions. Milosevic has consistently maintained that his audience is not the panel of three judges in the courtroom. Nevertheless, the belief that he can fool his larger audience back home in Serbia and the Republika Srpska shows how little he respects them. That, too, is consistent behavior.