Certain statements were taken from the website of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Suffering of the Serbs in Sarajevo between 1991 and 1995.
This documents database will be updated accordingly.
Testimony of dr Boris Strezokov
At the beginning of the war, without any explanation, the Crisis Staff removed him from the position of Director of the Institute for Vascular Surgery and Transplantation, although he was the only vascular surgeon in the clinic and in the city. Fearing the abuse by one of the numerous armed bandit-paramilitary formations, Strekozov moved to the premises of the Institute. However, he did not avoid embarrassment or harassment at the clinic either…
During this time, I personally witnessed Muslims arming themselves illegally in Gornji Velešići, especially since March 1992. I also saw that Rašid Džebo armed himself with an automatic rifle that he had supposedly received from this party, SDA. In the beginning of April 1992, I saw many Muslims with weapons securing their mosque in Gornji Velešići and on their holiday, Eid al-Fitr, that they celebrated those days, their fired from their weapons in celebration, which is how I concluded that they were massively armed.
… From 6th May and onwards, on several occasions, members of territorial defense came to my house searching for weapons; however, they did not find anything. I remember them coming on 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 25th May and also before that. On 26th May, sometime around 1 PM, a group of armed people in uniforms came. They were “Green berets”…
…We were taken to the Breza camp. They locked us in a basement with small windows, which was dirty, wet and cold. We were immediately raped, gang raped and beaten. I was there for two days. after that, I was taken into a different building and different room…
…The man who beat me in that room told me that it was a period of mourning in Zenica for fifteen days already, because 140 Muslim soldiers were killed in that part of the
line where I was arrested and that he would revenge that army on me…
…At that time, Sarajevo had various Muslim military groups led by Juka Prazina, Caco, Ćelo, and others. They took Serbs to camps, and they also had their own private prisons where Serbs were horrendously tortured and killed. Juka Prazina, specifically, had his own staging center in the Kralja Tomislava Street…
The basement we were in was about 20 square meters big and there were at least 30 people in there. Every day, some people were taken from there and others were coming, so it was always full. There were more imprisoned men than women in the basement. Men were taken to the upper floor and beaten mercilessly.
…After the other mujahideen raped my daughter and dressed up, the soldier from our area went towards my daughter. I broke away and started running towards her, and at that moment, the first mujahideen fired from the automatic rifle and shot me in the stomach and leg, which caused me to fall to the floor next to the couch….
…While I worked in the morgue, among other things, I remember when and SDS MP of the Parliament of B&H was brought. His last name was Najdanović, or something similar. He was in the morgue for about ten days, in a separate room. I had an opportunity to see his corpse. I saw that it was heavily beaten with six or seven bloody bruises….
…Bodies of these victims were buried in the city’s disposal site – a junkyard in Buća Potok, above the “Zrak” facility. The bodies were actually buried with an excavator. I had a chance to personally see this disposal site. It is a chasm around 100 meters deep. Every day, garbage is brought there from Sarajevo and tossed down with excavators. Ramiz Ademović told me in the Central Prison (I will discuss below about my time in the Central Prison and other prisons) all about tossing down bodies from Pofalići and Velešići in this disposal site. Ramiz was a driver in the “Šipad Standard” Company in Stup….
…On August 2, 1992 Bokun was taken out of his flat by four Muslim army soldiers on the charges of sending light signals to the Chetniks. Among those who took him to their headquarters situated in the Napoli pizzeria, street of Petra Dokića, were TOKAČA (he does not know first name), brother of the Muslim MoI official Mirsad Tokača and HOTA, a blond, tall guy, about 28 years old. He was beaten there, but he did not agree to
sign the testimony to confess his alleged guilt, and he was then taken to the prison at the
Viktor Bubanj barracks…
…By 10 April, the Green Berets had occupied the entire Koševo hospital complex. A man called Mema, half-idiot, psychopath, was in charge of the Urology Clinic. He gave himself the authority to inspect anyone at will, whenever he wanted, however he wanted, and even to run a commentary on the appearance and the characteristics of people to whom he could not hold a candle…
…One of the nurses, a Muslim, asked me about my nationality, because my surname was not quite clear to her. I answered: “Does it matter?” and I told her that I was an Orthodox Serb. I noticed that all middle medical staff were Muslims. Taking into consideration my serious wounds and pain and lying among only Muslim patients and wounded individuals, listening them talking that all Serbs had to be killed and expelled…
…They brought me into some hallways and then into a toilet where I had to sit on the toilet seat. They handcuffed me there. I sat there for another hour, and then they brought me, with a blindfold on, to some other rooms. When they took the blindfold off me, I was in a room where I could see a connections device, a bar, and a movie camera…
…We have also received the information that the Military Police with around 200 men, commanded by Almir Husić, who goes by the nickname of Prof. Kinez, has been working out of the old washroom and restaurant above the Otorhinolaryngology building in the Koševo Hospital complex. Further, there is some sort of an artillery weapon beneath the Faculty of Construction that is being deployed with some frequency, and two armored vehicles have been seen in the tunnel in Ciglane….
…At that time, I was cleaning that floor and when I came in the room where he was lying on the ground, a guard removed me from there. I heard his name from other prisoners. I didn’t learn who killed him, nor his name. We were called various names in the Central Prison. In cases of visits from journalists or Arab countries representatives, they would introduce us as prisoners, and in cases of visits from humanitarian organizations representatives, they introduced us as prisoners, convicts or conspirators…
…While I was in the “Viktor Bubanj” prison, I heard from other inmates that 12 Serbs had died before I came there. They died of hunger and beatings, but I cannot remember their names. While I was there, in the cell number 9, a name whose last name was Odžaković died of hunger. As far as I can remember, his first name was Neđo, I do not know where he was from….
..The police officer JASMIN said that he was working on arresting soldiers and civilians, smugglers and fifth column members in the presence of his unit in Dobrinja. He also had an explanation of why the City hall was burned. He said that it was fired on because there was a multi-barrel rocket launcher nearby, and when the MBRL was hit, the City hall caught fire in the explosion….
…During my interrogation, unknown reserve police officers beat me, as ordered by Muhamed Turčinović. I had already known him since we went to primary school together. All the tasks regarding the apprehension and imprisonment of Serbs in the “Silos” camp were finalized by Refik Tufo, a retired police officer who was a commander of the Police Station Department of the so called SJB Hadžići, with headquarters in Tarčin…
…Concerning the trials in which I participated as a lay judge, I noticed that Serbs were often charged with fabricated felonies such as giving various signals, that evidence of firearm possession was often faked by putting Military Police officers who participated in the search and arrest of these persons on the stand as witnesses…
…I would like to mention extremely brutal conduct of a person last named Topić, alias “Topa”. He owned a café in the Alipašino Polje. Afterwards, he was appointed a military attaché somewhere in Germany. He and his two companions entered the operating room while I was operating on a soldier who suffered minor injuries. They lifted the soldier off the table, pushed me away and immediately started beating the wounded soldier in front of the operating room. They took him to a destination unknown to me…
…Most crimes against the Serbs were committed at the beginning of the war in the “risky” parts of the town. The defector underlines the crimes, committed by NUSRET ŠIŠIĆ “DEDO”, who boasted to had killed 400 Chetniks in Alipašino Polje. He also considered as “Chetniks” the pregnant women whose husbands escaped to the Serb side. He would just push many Serbs through the windows of the flat where he found them…
…I want to mention that, in the aforementioned Headquarters, I found out that Sejad Piskić was a sniper in Grbavica and that he boasted about murdering two minor children from the “Loris” building. He also murdered other Serbian civilians, cut their ears off and lined them up the chain he used to keep around his neck…
…After the Muslim attacks on Gornji Pofalići, they arrested a number of civilians and carried out various acts of violence. A number of people have disappeared and nothing is known about them to this day, and the following people are known to me: my uncle Vojo Pikulić over 60 years old and his wife Marica, Pero Pikulić was last seen in the Viktor Bubanj camp, where every trace of him was lost, Dušan Kosić, Stana Čangalović, Stevo Vesković and his wife Stana, Radović, whose names I cannot recall at the moment, they were all retired…
