Page 5939
1 Tuesday, 12th August 1997
2 (10.00 am)
3 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. May
4 we have the witness? May we have the witness?
5 (Witness entered court)
6 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: May we have the appearances, please?
7 MR. NIEMANN: If your Honours, please, my name is Niemann and
8 I appear with Ms. McHenry, Mr. Turone and Ms. Van
9 Dusschoten for the Prosecution.
10 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Can we have the appearances on the
11 Defence.
12 MS. RESIDOVIC: Good morning, your Honours, my name is
13 Edina Residovic, I appear on behalf of Mr. Zejnil
14 Delalic. With me is my colleague, Eugene O'Sullivan,
15 professor from Canada.
16 MR. OLUJIC: Good morning, your Honours, I am Zejnil Olujic,
17 attorney from Croatia, appearing on behalf of Zdravko
18 Mucic. My co-counsel, Mr. Michael Greaves, is still
19 indisposed. With me is my colleague Duric, attorney
20 from Croatia.
21 MR. KARABDIC: Good morning, your Honours. My name is Salih
22 Karabdic, appearing on behalf of Hazim Delic, with me is
23 Mr. Tom Moran, attorney from Houston Texas.
24 MR. ACKERMAN: Good morning, your Honours, I am John
25 Ackerman, I appear along with my co-counsel Cynthia
Page 5940
1 McMurray on behalf of Mr. Esad Landzo.
2 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Can you warn the witness he is still
3 under oath.
4 THE REGISTRAR: Mr. Sudar, may I remind you you are still
5 under oath.
6 BRANKO SUDAR (continued)
7 Cross-examined by MS. McMURREY (continued)
8 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Ms. McMurrey, I think you are
9 continuing your cross-examination.
10 MS. McMURREY: Yes, thank you, your Honours. Good morning,
11 Mr. Sudar, how are you today?
12 A. Fine, thank you.
13 Q. I hope you slept well knowing you are going to be going
14 home soon.
15 A. Yes, very well, thank you.
16 Q. I just wanted to remind you of our agreement that we had
17 yesterday that you would testify in this court about the
18 things you personally know, personally saw, personally
19 heard and you were just reminded, of course, that you
20 were under oath and I know you will follow our
21 agreement. Is that true?
22 A. I do follow our agreement. I am saying only what I saw.
23 Q. Thank you very much. You were moved from -- I know can
24 you cannot remember dates, but you were moved from
25 Musala back to Celebici because it was determined you
Page 5941
1 had surrendered an automatic weapon, is that true?
2 A. No, I did not surrender any weapons.
3 Q. You did testify before last week that you had purchased
4 a pistol; is that not correct?
5 A. A pistol, yes, and I left it at home and I told them
6 where it was and then they went there the next day and
7 found it. I did buy myself a pistol and I had that
8 pistol.
9 Q. On last Thursday on page 5764, line 2 of the record, you
10 said that you did not know the guards but that you may
11 have seen a person known as Zenga as a child. You
12 stated you did not know him. The truth is that you
13 found out who Zenga or Mr. Landzo was from the other
14 people; is that not true?
15 A. I had not seen him -- rather I had seen him but I did
16 not know him well before, and I saw him in the camp,
17 they called him Landzo, Zenga, he was no longer a
18 child. He was a young man.
19 Q. Mr. Sudar, I believe you said that you testified -- that
20 you served in the Yugoslav army; is that correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Can you tell us what rank you had in the Yugoslav army?
23 A. I had no rank, I did not want to have any rank.
24 Q. You were an ordinary soldier?
25 A. Yes, ordinary soldier.
Page 5942
1 Q. As an ordinary soldier you are forced to or it is
2 mandatory that you follow the orders of your superiors,
3 is it not?
4 A. I do not know, I did not have any superiors or
5 anything.
6 Q. You have testified that Mr. Landzo would call people out
7 of hangar number 6 and it would be fair to say that as
8 far as you know, he could have been merely following
9 orders; is that not true?
10 A. I do not know whose orders he was following, but he did
11 call people out. On whose orders, I do not know.
12 Q. Is it not true that most of the time, 90 per cent of the
13 time, that the people were taken out of hangar number 6,
14 it was at night and it was dark?
15 A. No, it would happen in daytime. If I were to tell the
16 whole story, I would need half a day. He would call one
17 after another. I just mentioned some of the specific
18 cases, for instance Babic, Mrkajic, then the taxi driver
19 Bendjo, there were people who were taken out in the
20 daytime and he would come into the hangar in the daytime
21 and beat people, not only at nighttime.
22 Q. You also testified on page 5757, line 5 of the
23 transcript from last Thursday that the door of hangar 6
24 was always kept shut, making it unbearably hot inside;
25 is that not what you said?
Page 5943
1 A. The door was closed when they wanted it to be closed,
2 when they wanted us not to have enough air. We would
3 lie down on the concrete to get more air. We had no
4 water, no food, or very little, and when they came in,
5 they would open the door, Zenga opened the door when he
6 came in. Sometimes it was open, but sometimes when he
7 wanted to torture us, then the door was closed.
8 Q. It is also true that most of the guards were very young;
9 is that not correct?
10 A. No, I would not say they were that young. As soon as
11 they were carrying a weapon and is a soldier, I do not
12 think a child can wear a uniform.
13 Q. It is true and you know that Mr. Landzo was only about 18
14 or 19 years old in 1992, right?
15 A. Madam, I do not know how old he is.
16 Q. You say you heard his voice most often because he was
17 the one who was ordered to call the people out. There
18 were other young guards that may have had high pitched
19 voices too, is that not true?
20 A. His voice was generally heard. There was Dedic Osman as
21 well, let me remember, Padalovic, there was a policeman
22 from Foca, Dedic, Osman somebody called Kemal, I do not
23 remember the surnames very well but Landzo was seen most
24 often, at least as far as I was able to observe, he was
25 the most prominent in everything.
Page 5944
1 Q. I would just like for you to listen to this question.
2 I think it is a real simple answer. It is true that you
3 do not know the voices of all of the other young guards,
4 do you?
5 A. The other young guards -- I have forgotten these things,
6 but I remember his high pitched voice. It was easily
7 recognisable. As soon as we would hear his voice, we
8 knew it was Zenga. He would walk around the hangar, he
9 would bring in a dog, he would force it to jump on
10 people, but the dog did not want to luckily. He would
11 set it against us. He did all kinds of things. It is
12 difficult to describe from the human point of view.
13 Q. But my question was, I appreciate you telling your
14 story, but my question was: you do not know the voices
15 of all the other young guards, do you?
16 A. For instance Kemo or Osman, we would hear the voices.
17 But it is five years since that. I would know when
18 Delic was coming too, one can hear these voices and
19 recognise them.
20 Q. You talked last Thursday about a man named Scepo Gotovac
21 and I just want you to listen to my question?
22 A. Yes, Scepo Gotovac.
23 Q. You told your story last Thursday but I have one
24 specific question. The specific question is Mr. Gotovac
25 was taken outside the hangar and you did not see what
Page 5945
1 happened to him outside the hangar, you only saw the
2 results when he was brought back inside the hangar; is
3 that not true?
4 A. Zenga took him out of the hangar. Delic was there, just
5 outside the door, they took him out, one could hear him
6 wailing, Zenga was beating him, one could hear his
7 voice.
8 Q. Mr. Sudar, the truth is you do not know what was
9 happening outside because you did not see it, did you?
10 A. When the door was open, we saw him take him out, and in
11 front of the door one could hear him being hosed with
12 water.
13 Q. I want to take you back now to a Simo Jovanovic. I want
14 you to remember that on page 5769, line 3, you did tell
15 this court that he was beaten by his neighbours, and
16 I believe his neighbours were from Celebici, were they
17 not?
18 A. Some people or other, I heard, I did not know them well,
19 somebody called Subasic and there was a Cosic, something
20 like that, they were teasing him; Simo, do you want some
21 fish, because he had a fish pond apparently. Zenga was
22 with them too.
23 Q. I want to also ask you the story you told us last
24 Thursday, that Zenga came in and he started beating some
25 people which included Bosko Samoukovic. At that time,
Page 5946
1 when Mr. Samoukovic was hit and he fell down, Mr. Landzo
2 seemed frightened about that, did he not?
3 A. I cannot remember these details. When the man fell, to
4 tell you the truth, I could not even stand to watch any
5 more. He first beat Rajko Mrkajic, and Samoukovic's
6 son, I think his name was Nedzo, then he hit Bosko.
7 Q. Mr. Sudar, my question was: did Mr. Landzo seem
8 frightened?
9 A. I cannot remember that.
10 Q. Thank you. You do not know whether Mr. Landzo was
11 following orders at that time, do you?
12 A. I cannot say. It is up to each individual whether they
13 will follow orders or not, each one is responsible for
14 himself.
15 Q. You also told us about a Spaso Miljevic and you went
16 into detail about some yellowish gun powder that was put
17 on the blade of a knife and heated inside the hangar.
18 My question to you is: if Mr. Miljevic told this court
19 that all this happened outside the hangar, he would be
20 wrong, right?
21 A. He was some way away from me. I saw him being
22 mistreated inside and out. He hit him inside and Babic,
23 the forester and Gotovac, both outside and inside, all
24 kinds of things, I cannot recall all the specific
25 details.
Page 5947
1 Q. Also if this person said the knife was heated outside by
2 setting a linen bag on fire he would be wrong also? It
3 had nothing to do with the gun powder?
4 A. He said that something yellow was powdered on him, that
5 is what this man told us afterwards when he had these
6 burns.
7 Q. Yes, but you told this court on Thursday that you saw
8 this yellowish powder and this yellow liquid?
9 A. He was carrying some yellowish powder, he was carrying
10 it and a liquid too. I do not understand these things,
11 these flammable materials, I do not know much about
12 them.
13 MS. McMURREY: Thank you, Mr. Sudar. I do not have any
14 further questions.
15 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Any re-examination?
16 Re-examined by MR. NIEMANN
17 Q. Yes, a couple of very short questions, your Honour.
18 Mr. Sudar, yesterday, Mr. Moran, Defence counsel, asked
19 you some questions about a list being called out of
20 names of people to leave the camp and your name was on
21 that list. Do you remember those questions?
22 A. Just a moment, please. Could you repeat that question?
23 Q. Yes. Yesterday, when you were being cross-examined by
24 Mr. Moran from the Defence, he asked you about Mr. Delic
25 coming into the hangar and calling out a list of names
Page 5948
1 of people to be released from the camp. Do you remember
2 that?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Did you not respond to your name being called out
5 because you wanted to stay in the camp, or was it more
6 because you wished to be exchanged by the Red Cross?
7 A. I wanted to be exchanged by the Red Cross because I had
8 been registered, and before that, Zivak, who had been in
9 the camp was released and afterwards we heard he had
10 been killed, so I was afraid. I thought I would be
11 protected by the Red Cross by the very fact that I had
12 been registered by them.
13 Q. Were you in fact later exchanged?
14 A. I was later exchanged.
15 MR. NIEMANN: I have no further questions, your Honour.
16 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: This is all for this witness?
17 MR. NIEMANN: Yes, your Honour.
18 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Thank you very much, Mr. Sudar. You are
19 discharged.
20 A. Thank you, your Honours.
21 (The witness withdrew)
22 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: You are calling your next witness now?
23 MR. TURONE: Yes, your Honour, the Prosecution is now calling
24 Mr. Petko Grubac.
25 Petko Grubac (sworn)
Page 5949
1 Examined by MR. TURONE
2 Q. May I proceed, your Honour?
3 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Yes, you may.
4 MR. TURONE: Thank you. Good morning, sir. Would you please
5 state your full name?
6 A. My name is Petko Grubac.
7 Q. What is your place and date of birth?
8 A. I was born on 20th October 1939 in the vicinity of
9 Pluzine, Montenegro, in the municipality of Polje
10 Crkvicko.
11 Q. What is your ethnic background?
12 A. I am a Serb, a Montenegran.
13 Q. What is your profession, please?
14 A. I am a doctor, specialist in neurology and psychiatry.
15 Q. Can you please summarise your education, Dr. Grubac?
16 A. I completed elementary school and then secondary school,
17 a grammar school, then I studied medicine at the school
18 of medicine in Sarajevo. After that I completed my
19 specialisation at the Clinical Hospital in Sarajevo, in
20 psychiatrics and neurology and afterwards, I did a
21 postgraduate course in health care and I worked in
22 Konjic.
23 Q. Where were you living in the beginning of 1992?
24 A. I was living in Konjic.
25 Q. Precisely where did you work at that time, in Konjic?
Page 5950
1 A. I worked in the health centre as a neuro-psychiatrist.
2 Q. Did there come a time when you left Konjic in 1992?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Where did you go?
5 A. Because of the situation in Konjic, somewhere around the
6 second half of April 1992 I took my son and daughter to
7 the family home of the parents of my wife in the village
8 of Bradina where they had their home and farm, and
9 during the weekend for May day, my wife and I went to
10 visit my children, though we were both working in Konjic
11 all that time. After the May day holidays we would go
12 to work by bus or in our own car to Konjic, and we were
13 in Konjic for the last time on 5th or 6th May.
14 Q. After that, you went to Bradina, you say?
15 A. Yes, after that I stayed with my family in Bradina.
16 Q. Can you be more precise about the reason for which you
17 left Konjic for Bradina?
18 A. I left Konjic because I did not feel safe, because some
19 things started happening in Konjic which provoked fear
20 in me and my family. On May day 1992, a man, a Serb,
21 was killed, Djordjo Magazin in his courtyard and his
22 house was close to the orthodox church, and some other
23 things started happening so that we were fearful and we
24 felt that perhaps it would be better for us to stay in
25 the family home of my wife's parents in Bradina.
Page 5951
1 Q. Dr. Grubac, was there any organised armed defence in the
2 village of Bradina?
3 A. To tell you the truth, I cannot tell you in detail what
4 was happening, but I think there were some kind of
5 village guard duty, I would call it that, and they held
6 certain checkpoints in the surroundings of Bradina in
7 order to prevent anyone coming into the village to kill
8 somebody, set fire to something and that sort of thing.
9 Q. Were you in any way part of this organisation of
10 checkpoints, et cetera?
11 A. No, at the beginning I was in my in-laws' home and later
12 on I worked in the infirmary as a doctor.
13 Q. Did you have any weapon, were you armed anyhow?
14 A. No, I had no weapons. Actually, I do not know how to
15 use any armaments.
16 Q. Were you part of any political organisation there?
17 A. Until 1990 I was a member of the league of communists, as
18 the majority of the people there were, and after that
19 I tried with a group of people of Croats and Muslims to
20 organise some sort of a movement, a movement for
21 Yugoslavia, but that did not take off so I was actually
22 not a member of any political party after that time.
23 Q. Were you part of any negotiations going on between
24 persons from Bradina and persons from Konjic in that
25 area at that time?
Page 5952
1 A. No, I was not directly a participant but there was a
2 group of people who went to the village of Podorosac to
3 consult with the Muslims and Croats.
4 Q. I see. Dr. Grubac, was there any military action in
5 Bradina in May 1992?
6 A. You mean on the part of the Serb population, whether
7 they undertook any actions?
8 Q. I am meaning if there was any kind of military action,
9 attack, fight in Bradina in May 1992?
10 A. In May 1992, someone, I am not quite sure who, mined the
11 tunnel which was a communication line in Bradina and
12 Konjic and I believe that from May 10th, on May
13 10th there was some sort of a smaller scale attack but
14 I am not sure on whose part it was.
15 Q. What about in the later part of May?
16 A. Later in May, on May 25th, there was an attack on
17 Bradina by the Muslim and the Croat army.
18 Q. Where were you at the time of this attack on Bradina?
19 A. I was in the village infirmary with my colleague,
20 Mrkajic Relja.
21 Q. At some point were you captured or arrested?
22 A. No, I was not captured, nor was I arrested.
23 Q. What happened exactly to you?
24 A. On that day when the attack on Bradina took place,
25 somewhere towards evening, some people came, called me
Page 5953
1 and my colleague to dress the wound of a man who had
2 been wounded in the nearby hamlet. We went there, took
3 a look at this person. He was wounded in the upper
4 leg. We bandaged his wound, we gave him some pain
5 killers and then we returned to the infirmary. In the
6 evening I went to sleep in the house of my wife's
7 parents in a hamlet on the opposite side from the
8 infirmary. There I stayed the night and there I was
9 that night and on the next day, 26th May, when the
10 attack on Bradina continued. From that position we
11 could roughly see what was happening in the other parts
12 of the village. We could hear the fire, we could see
13 houses being set on fire, and this continued on 26th,
14 then 27th May, and they conditionally speaking were
15 sweeping the village. They were setting houses on fire,
16 and also the house where I had been staying with my
17 family. We were afraid that they would kill someone,
18 that they would do something to someone so that one
19 evening on the 26th, we spent the night at the house and
20 on the 27th, with some other women and children who were
21 fleeing from the village as refugees, we slept by a
22 creek, on the 27th, that night and as we saw them
23 advancing, they had advanced to this hamlet and were
24 setting houses on fire in that hamlet. We were in fear
25 for our lives and on the next morning we decided to come
Page 5954
1 down to the centre of the village.
2 Q. I wanted you to slow down a little and go ahead in your
3 account, please?
4 A. In this group of refugees there were about 30 women,
5 children, and four of us men. We decided to take the
6 road to the centre of the village to go to the
7 checkpoint, the army and report to the army.
8 Q. To which army?
9 A. To the Muslim and Croat army.
10 Q. After you reported to them, what happened to you?
11 A. At the checkpoint we found the army and the police.
12 There they separated the women and the children and took
13 them to the village school and the four of us men were
14 put in a car and taken to Konjic.
15 Q. Exactly where in Konjic?
16 A. They took us to the police building, the MUP, the
17 Ministry of the Interior building.
18 Q. What happened to you in this place?
19 A. First they seized -- my things are there, I had a
20 briefcase with my personal things and documents, which
21 they took. That was at the entrance gate. Then they
22 took me inside the building to a corridor where I stayed
23 for a while. There they separated us. The three other
24 men were taken somewhere and they kept me for a short
25 while in that corridor. Soon thereafter, the commander
Page 5955
1 of the MUP appeared, the head of the MUP, Jasmin Guska,
2 with his assistant Niksic and several other policemen.
3 He started cursing at me and insulting me and he slapped
4 me in the face and he ordered the policemen to take me
5 to a cell. They took me to a cell then, in the cellar.
6 There I found seven or eight, perhaps even ten people.
7 I recognised some of them. They told me that these were
8 people from Celebici, the village of Celebici, that they
9 had been incarcerated there for three weeks. They
10 looked pitiful, miserable, unshaven, dirty, starved,
11 emaciated. They were thin. I could hardly recognise
12 some of them. Among them was also Simo Jovanovic. That
13 was a room that I mentioned, perhaps 3 by 4 metres. At
14 one end there was planks and there were old army
15 blankets on the planks. They told me they had been
16 sleeping and sitting there for three weeks. In another
17 corner there was a plastic or metal container which they
18 used to relieve themselves.
19 Q. How long did you remain in this room with these people?
20 A. For two hours maybe.
21 Q. What happened after that?
22 A. After that some policemen came, told us to get out of
23 that cell. They also assembled the people from another
24 adjacent cell, also people who have been imprisoned
25 there from the village of Celebici. They all loaded us
Page 5956
1 into a police van and shut us inside, told us not to try
2 to escape or else, and then they took us somewhere.
3 Q. Exactly where were you brought with this van?
4 A. They took us to the Celebici camp, to a building of the
5 former Yugoslav People's Army.
6 Q. Dr. Grubac, did anybody tell you why you were being
7 arrested?
8 A. No one told me anything, nor did they feel the need to
9 explain anything to me because at that time Serbs were
10 being arrested without any reason. I believe that just
11 being a Serb was reason enough for them to arrest me.
12 Q. Again, you told the court now that somebody took your
13 personal belongings and your documents from you. Did
14 you ever get them back?
15 A. No, never. I never got those things back, although
16 later at a certain occasion when I was shut up in the
17 same building again, yet another time, I asked for those
18 things to be returned to me.
19 Q. How many prisoners were with you in the van which
20 brought you to Celebici that day, approximately?
21 A. Some 20 prisoners.
22 Q. Do you remember, by the way, which day that was?
23 A. Just a minute. It was 28th May 1992.
24 Q. Approximately at what time of that day did you arrive at
25 Celebici camp?
Page 5957
1 A. It was somewhere around noon or immediately thereafter.
2 Q. Where did the van stop inside the camp?
3 A. The van passed through the metal gates of the camp. It
4 came to a halt at a certain spot near the gate post and
5 a wall, at a clearing which was some 15 or 20 metres
6 from the entrance gate.
7 Q. What happened right after the van stopped in this place?
8 A. They opened the rear door of the van. They told us to
9 get out and to stand against a wall, to place our arms
10 behind our heads, to lean against a wall with our arms
11 and to spread our legs and also to empty our pockets.
12 Excuse me, they also told us to take our belts out of
13 our trousers, those with belts.
14 Q. How long did you stay lined up against this wall?
15 A. Between half a hour and a hour, perhaps more likely a
16 hour.
17 Q. How were you treated while staying lined up against the
18 wall?
19 A. We were not physically maltreated or beaten.
20 Q. Where were you taken after you were lined up against the
21 wall?
22 A. We were taken to a building, a hangar, the so-called
23 number 6.
24 Q. How many people did you observe being present in hangar
25 number 6?
Page 5958
1 A. There were around 250 people in there.
2 Q. By the way, without giving details now, how long did
3 you -- how many nights did you spend inside hangar 6
4 approximately?
5 A. Two nights.
6 Q. Going back to the moment you arrived there, what
7 happened the next day?
8 A. In the hangar?
9 Q. Yes, and anyway, what happened to you the next day after
10 your arrival?
11 A. The next day after our arrival, nothing in particular
12 happening, but in the evening, somewhere around 10.00 pm
13 or perhaps a bit later, the guard opened the door to the
14 hangar and called me out to get out, called my name to
15 get out, so I did, I went out. He put me in some kind
16 of a van, in the rear. He shut the door and drove off
17 with me inside. Then he stopped, having brought me to
18 the building where the camp command was.
19 Q. So you were brought with a car inside the camp to the
20 command building; is that correct?
21 A. Yes, exactly.
22 Q. What happened to you when you reached the command
23 building in this particular occasion?
24 A. They led me inside the command building and then into a
25 room to the right of the entrance, in which room I saw,
Page 5959
1 I found my colleague, Dr. Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic, who was
2 the President of the war presidency and also the
3 chairman of the SDA party in Konjic. With him was
4 Jasmin Guska, who was the police commander or the head
5 of the Ministry of the Interior in Konjic and secretary
6 of the SDA party. With them was also Hazim Delic who
7 was the assistant warden of the camp in Celebici or
8 deputy warden.
9 Q. What happened there in this room with these people?
10 A. Dr. Hadzihuseinovic asked Delic to leave the room and he
11 did. They put me on a chair and they interrogated me,
12 asking me why I had been brought, why I had been in
13 Bradina, who I associated with before, whether I had any
14 connections with the army, with the officers.
15 Eventually, Dr. Hadzihuseinovic told me in the end, that
16 is, that I would be treated by them according to the
17 Geneva convention, saying that afterwards I would be
18 tried for what I had done. Jasmin Guska saw my glasses
19 in my pocket and told me to throw them on the floor and
20 he trampled them underfoot and he broke them, and then
21 he cursed at me, swore at me. He told me to sit on the
22 floor, crawl on the floor and things like that.
23 Q. By the way, did you ever receive back your glasses or
24 another pair of glasses?
25 A. Jasmin Guska stepped on the glasses before my eyes.
Page 5960
1 They were on the floor, so he broke them. I did not get
2 them back.
3 Q. Just to give us some general information, can you see
4 well enough even without glasses?
5 A. I see well, these were for short sightedness, if I were
6 to drive for any long periods, and they were shaded a
7 bit and I used them mostly when it was strong sunshine.
8 I was comfortable wearing them driving. I did not at
9 all times wear glasses, only sometimes, on such
10 occasions.
11 Q. What did exactly Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic say about you
12 being supposed to be treated according to the Geneva
13 Convention? Can you be more precise about what he told
14 you about that?
15 A. I can only say that he told me that they would treat me
16 in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and I cannot
17 say what he meant by that. I am not -- I do not know
18 whether he knew what it meant, treating a doctor who is
19 a prisoner or in a camp according to the Geneva
20 Conventions because obviously later they did not at all
21 treat me as a doctor according to the Geneva
22 Conventions.
23 Q. How long did you remain in the command building in this
24 occasion? How long did all this last?
25 A. It did not last long. It perhaps lasted 45 or 60
Page 5961
1 minutes.
2 Q. Did you then go back to hangar number 6?
3 A. Yes, they placed me in the same van and returned me to
4 hangar 6.
5 Q. Did you spend that night in hangar 6?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. What happened to you the following day?
8 A. The following day someone came for me. I could not
9 exactly say who, and took me to the building of the
10 elementary school called "3 Mart" in Konjic.
11 Q. As we understand, that was after two nights spent in the
12 camp then on May 30th; is that correct?
13 A. Yes, it is correct.
14 Q. Were you brought to the 3rd March school with a vehicle?
15 A. Yes, I was taken there in a vehicle because it is some 4
16 or 5 kilometres away from Celebici.
17 Q. Who was in that vehicle? Only the driver or anybody
18 else?
19 A. I cannot recall that detail.
20 Q. All right. Did anybody tell you what would be your task
21 in the school named 3rd March?
22 A. I do not know remember anyone telling me what I was
23 supposed to do in the school 3rd March, but when I came
24 there I found my colleague Dr. Relja Mrkajic and he told
25 me we would be there with the injured people to extend
Page 5962
1 assistance to them.
2 Q. So you have arrived there and you found your colleague
3 Relja Mrkajic. How many patients did you find there
4 right on your arrival?
5 A. Somewhere around 30.
6 Q. Did the number of patients have any variation in the
7 following days?
8 A. It changed. Some came and a number of the patients were
9 shifted to another building.
10 Q. What kind of patients were they? Can you briefly give
11 us a general overview of the problems or injuries they
12 had?
13 A. They were all severely injured patients. I do not know
14 according to what criterion they had been chosen and
15 taken up there, but they had grave injuries, fractures
16 or severe injuries. One of them was in a coma.
17 Q. Did any of these patients tell you where and how did
18 they get their injuries?
19 A. Yes, they did. They told me.
20 Q. Do you remember some specific persons who told you where
21 he had got his injuries?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Can you say?
24 A. For instance, Marko Mrkajic told me that his leg had
25 been broken when he was being taken to the Celebici
Page 5963
1 camp. Strajo Cecez had a jaw fracture and he also told
2 me he had been hurt when he was being brought to the
3 camp.
4 JUDGE JAN: All this is relevant for us? We are more
5 concerned with what happened in Celebici.
6 MR. TURONE: Yes, because we are now coming to a particular
7 person who is in the indictment as a victim of wilful
8 killing in our indictment.
9 JUDGE JAN: Okay.
10 MR. TURONE: Can you remember approximately how many persons
11 there were with severe injuries from Celebici camp?
12 A. I do not know what criterion to apply, a judicial one or
13 medical, to say whether these are grave or light
14 injuries, but the criterion which I can apply is the one
15 which is used in court in my country to tell you which
16 of the injuries were light and which were grave --
17 Q. I am sorry, I just wanted to know the number of people
18 with injuries from the Celebici camp?
19 A. Maybe all these people were from Celebici camp, perhaps
20 some of them were not, but most of them were from
21 Bradina and Celebici camp.
22 Q. Thank you. During your stay in the 3rd March school did
23 any of the patients die?
24 A. Yes, one patient died.
25 Q. What is the name of this patient?
Page 5964
1 A. Slobodan Babic.
2 Q. Was Slobodan Babic himself able to say anything about
3 how he received his injuries?
4 A. No, from the moment I arrived to 3rd March school
5 Slobodan Babic could not speak and it was not possible
6 to communicate with him verbally.
7 Q. Was Slobodan Babic already there when you arrived in
8 3rd March school?
9 A. Yes, he was there.
10 Q. Can you describe in detail the visible injuries which
11 were visible on him?
12 A. What I was able to observe was bruises. He was black
13 and blue on his face, neck, arms. My colleague told me
14 that he had an injury in his mouth. I opened his mouth
15 with a spatula and I looked inside. He had an injury of
16 the hard and soft palate which was slightly bleeding.
17 Q. How did you treat Slobodan Babic?
18 A. Slobodan Babic was seriously injured. He was in a coma
19 and what we could do was to place urinary catheter
20 because he could no longer control his urination so as
21 to avoid him being always wet. We had one catheter and
22 we had it implanted -- we had some antibiotics,
23 penicillin. We gave him strong doses of penicillin
24 while it lasted and that was all.
25 Q. When you say that Slobodan Babic had an injury of the
Page 5965
1 hard and soft palate, do you mean -- which kind of an
2 injury did you see looking at his mouth?
3 A. It was torn, his whole soft and hard palate was torn and
4 there were pieces of tissue hanging. There was a
5 laceration inside and there was pus and blood dripping
6 from these wounds inside his mouth.
7 Q. How long did Slobodan Babic remain in a coma before
8 dying?
9 A. Ever since I arrived, that is from 30th until maybe the
10 5th, I think, 5th June roughly. That was when he died.
11 Q. Was his body immediately removed?
12 A. Yes, the body was taken away, I do not know where.
13 Q. How did your stay at the 3rd March school end?
14 A. One night, this could have been 6th or 7th June, Pavo
15 Mucic came and told us that we were going to be moved to
16 another place. We asked why and where we were going,
17 and he said that we were being moved to the Celebici
18 camp because we were not safe at the school. That was
19 the reason he gave, because the school could be
20 shelled.
21 Q. Can you say approximately at what time on that day
22 Mr. Mucic came?
23 A. He came late at night, maybe after 10.00 in the evening.
24 Q. That was on 6th or 7th June, you said?
25 A. Yes.
Page 5966
1 Q. How many patients were there in that moment?
2 A. At that moment there were much fewer patients than at
3 the beginning, because a doctor came from the health
4 centre and he moved half of the patients to the Musala
5 sports hall in Konjic. Just before we were moved
6 somebody told us that the remaining patients should be
7 reduced so that there would be no more than ten
8 patients, plus the two of us doctors, so there were
9 about ten of us.
10 Q. So that night when Mr. Mucic came, there were about ten
11 patients. Was Mr. Mucic in uniform when he came that
12 night?
13 A. Yes, he was in uniform.
14 Q. Did he come with any vehicle?
15 A. There was a large truck with a canvass cover, and
16 I cannot remember for sure whether there was a private
17 car as well, but I know for sure that there was a large
18 lorry.
19 Q. After Mucic told you that you should move somewhere
20 else, actually to Celebici, what did you do then,
21 exactly?
22 A. He told us that we needed to move the things we had, the
23 beds we had, and the mattresses that some of the injured
24 were lying on. We loaded all this on to this large
25 lorry and we climbed up as well and they took us to
Page 5967
1 Celebici.
2 Q. Were the patients lying or standing in the truck?
3 A. Some were leaning against the mattresses, whatever
4 position they could find, because this was a truck that
5 we had to fit all the things into and all of us as well.
6 Q. Did Mr. Mucic also come on the truck with you to
7 Celebici?
8 A. I cannot recall for sure whether Mucic was in the actual
9 driver's cabin or in another vehicle, but he did come to
10 Celebici with us.
11 Q. Did the truck stop inside the camp or at the entrance of
12 the camp?
13 A. The truck stopped inside the camp in front of building
14 22.
15 Q. What happened then?
16 A. He told us then that we had to move in to this
17 building. He showed it to us, he opened the metal
18 door --
19 Q. When you say "he", who do you mean?
20 A. Pavo, Pavo Mucic.
21 Q. Please go ahead.
22 A. We unloaded the things, we positioned the beds and the
23 mattresses inside building 22, and that is where we
24 stayed from 6th or 7th onwards.
25 Q. Who told you what you were supposed to do in building
Page 5968
1 22, if anybody?
2 A. I think that officially no one told us anything as to
3 what we would be doing. It was understood what we had
4 to do with the injured people.
5 Q. In which capacity did Mr. Mucic come and pick you up and
6 tell you what he told you and transport you to
7 Celebici? Do you know which official role he had, if
8 any?
9 A. He did not introduce himself to us officially. He did
10 not say why he had come. He did not say what his
11 official position was. We learnt later what his
12 position in the camp was.
13 Q. What did you learn about his official position in the
14 camp?
15 A. We learnt from the guards and from the relationships
16 amongst them that he was the commander of the Celebici
17 camp.
18 Q. Dr. Grubac, just to give an immediate overview to the
19 court without entering into details, how long did you
20 stay as a prisoner in Celebici camp?
21 A. I was in the Celebici camp from 28th May until 22nd July
22 1992.
23 Q. Considering all those days you spent in the 3rd March
24 school, of course.
25 A. Yes.
Page 5969
1 Q. Did you stay all the time in building number 22?
2 A. Yes, all the time I was in building 22.
3 Q. Did Dr. Relja Mrkajic also spend his time in building
4 number 22?
5 A. Yes, we were together throughout that time.
6 Q. Can you describe in some detail this building, building
7 number 22?
8 A. Building 22 is actually a hangar, but it differed from
9 hangar number 6 as it was not entirely made of metal.
10 The walls were made of building material. It had a
11 metal roof towards the front, the side facing the
12 command building, there was a metal double door.
13 Opposite to the door there were two high windows which
14 could be opened only partly, like a flap. The floor was
15 concrete. When we came into the building it was
16 absolutely empty. The size of the building is about 8
17 or 10 metres by 5, roughly. We put in the wooden beds
18 that we had, some mattresses that we had brought from
19 the school. I slept on a bed that is normally used in
20 infirmaries, that was in the 3rd March school and we
21 brought it with us. There was no water inside. There
22 was not a toilet inside, nor any other facilities.
23 Q. Can you describe in some detail the door of this
24 building?
25 A. The doors were metal, double doors, both wings could be
Page 5970
1 opened. There was a Elset lock. They were mostly
2 closed, but as this was a hangar they did not fit too
3 well. The doors were raised from the ground by about
4 1.5 to 2 centimetres, which we used to peep out to see
5 what was happening in the yard and in the command
6 building.
7 Q. What about the windows? How many windows were there?
8 A. There were two windows on the opposite side to the
9 doors.
10 Q. So what part of the camp could you see looking through
11 these windows?
12 A. The window that was to the right of the entrance we
13 could see tunnel number 9 and we used that window
14 frequently out of curiosity, but also to learn things,
15 and one of the injured persons who was a patient had a
16 father imprisoned from number 9, so he would spend a lot
17 of time at the window to see what was happening to his
18 father.
19 Q. Who was this patient by the way?
20 A. His name is Mrkajic, his father's name is Nikola
21 Mrkajic, he was in number 9 and his name was -- I am
22 afraid I cannot recall his first name for the moment.
23 Q. It does not matter.
24 A. Maybe I will remember later.
25 Q. Could you please now look at the model you see in front
Page 5971
1 of you. You can stand up, you can even turn around if
2 you wish and examine it and tell the court if you
3 recognise it. You had better keep your earphones, Dr.
4 Grubac. May I ask the usher to provide the witness with
5 a pointer so he can point?
6 What is this, Dr. Grubac? What does this
7 represent?
8 A. This model represents the Celebici camp.
9 Q. Could you please point to the particular places you have
10 been talking about, the entrance, the command building,
11 the hangar, building 22, tunnel 9 et cetera, please?
12 A. I am familiar with this part of this facility, whereas
13 the rest of it I am not familiar with because I did not
14 move about there. It was used -- I am not aware that it
15 was used as a camp, at least I am not familiar with
16 that. This was a segment of the railway track going
17 from the railway station at Celebici and entering the
18 actual facility. This is the entrance to the camp from
19 the village. This is the entrance we use, there may
20 have been another one, but I do not know, but that was
21 where things were happening.
22 This is the wall that I referred to where we were
23 lined up when we were brought in at the beginning. This
24 is the reception where the guards were. Building B is a
25 barracks is a hut used as a command building. Opposite
Page 5972
1 is number 22 where we were, and this building D is also
2 part of the command building where the guards slept.
3 This, I do not know what it was used for, I do not
4 remember it very well. The windows are here and from
5 this window we could see this facility, that is tunnel
6 number 9. Further away here we would go here, to one of
7 these buildings, I think this one was number 6.
8 Q. Thank you very much, Dr. Grubac. You can go back to your
9 seat.
10 Going back to the description of building 22,
11 could you please now describe this place in its function
12 as an infirmary. Can you explain the facilities, the
13 equipment, the medicine, the instruments, et cetera,
14 which you had?
15 A. I said what the building looked like when we arrived.
16 It was like a hangar. I do not know why it was that we
17 concluded that it was a warehouse for firefighting
18 equipment. I think one of the prisoners said that when
19 they first arrived and were put in that building that
20 there were some fire extinguishers there and that is why
21 we assumed that it was a warehouse for that equipment.
22 So there was no water, as I said, no tap, no toilet.
23 There was electricity, though.
24 We called the building number 22 or we called it
25 the infirmary. Inside were the two of us doctors, Dr.
Page 5973
1 Relja Mrkajic and myself, and there were about ten
2 injured people. When we had no more room on the beds,
3 we had one or two mats that we had brought with us from
4 the 3rd March school, from the gym and these gym mats
5 were also used by the patients instead of beds. Among
6 the equipment we had an office table, a wooden office
7 table, one wooden chair. We had a pressure gauge, a
8 stethoscope. At the beginning, we had a few bottles of
9 penicillin. At the beginning, we had a metal drum with
10 sterile bandages. We had a pair of tweezers which were
11 not sterile. We had some bandages, and later on they
12 gave us old sheets to use as bandages for the patients.
13 This drum with the sterile compresses and gauze could be
14 sterile only until it was opened, after which it was no
15 longer sterile, but we still used it. Later on they did
16 not provide any more sterile material. We had a few
17 plastic syringes and needles. We did not decide who
18 would be brought into the building or who would be taken
19 away; nor could we have any influence regarding the
20 provision of medicines and other materials. We did not
21 have an oxygen apparatus or any other medical equipment.
22 Q. So could you in any way perform any kind of surgery, and
23 with which instruments?
24 A. In order to perform any surgery you have to have the
25 necessary instruments, which necessarily have to be
Page 5974
1 sterile. We had no surgical instruments, and even if we
2 had had them they could not be sterilised. We only had
3 a pair of scissors, surgical scissors with which we cut
4 the gauze and the bandages and on one occasion Dr. Relja
5 did intervene with a patient who had pus on his leg. He
6 used the scissors to open this wound and to clean it,
7 but we could not engage in any other kind of surgical
8 treatment. We could not even provide sterile bandages
9 for people who needed it.
10 Q. Was there any procedure for requesting and obtaining
11 medicines?
12 A. In communication with them they told us there were no
13 instruments or equipment they could provide, but as for
14 the medicines and supplies, I did write up a list
15 several times of what we needed, but Hazim Delic said
16 that it was not available and several times he would
17 bring a couple of bandages, some pain killer tablets,
18 some diarrhoea tablets and a liquid to treat lice.
19 Q. If you could describe your medicine supply, how many
20 kinds of medicines would you say you had?
21 A. At the beginning we had some antibiotics, but only
22 penicillin in small bottles. I think these bottles were
23 6 million of penicillin. We had a small quantity of
24 this. We had no broad spectrum antibiotics, nor any
25 other kinds of antibiotics. We had some analgesics at
Page 5975
1 the beginning, that is pain killers. We had some pills
2 to treat diarrhoea, as many prisoners had diarrhoea and
3 occasionally we had this liquid for destroying lice. We
4 had no other supplies, no gauze, no bandages, no burn
5 treatment, ointment, because there were lots of people
6 with burns, nor any other sterile material to treat
7 people.
8 Q. Could you send persons to the hospital when you deemed
9 that necessary?
10 A. We had no power to decide as to the way the injured
11 would be treated, nor when they were brought in or taken
12 away or taken to any other institution, and while we
13 were there not a single of the patients was taken for
14 diagnostic or any other reasons to a medical
15 institution, though the need for this did exist.
16 Q. Were there medical files for the prisoners?
17 A. Only at the beginning, Dr. Relja and I kept a log. There
18 was a notebook where we would put down the number, the
19 name of the patient, the diagnosis and the treatment we
20 gave. We kept this log at first, believing it to be
21 necessary to have medical documentation as we had been
22 used to, but we saw that this had no interest and that
23 it served no purpose and gradually we gave up.
24 Q. Were you in a position to be complete and accurate in
25 keeping these records and writing what you had to there?
Page 5976
1 A. No, we did not dare register every injury because we
2 feared that somebody might come and look into this
3 notebook and that we might have some consequences as a
4 result, so we would enter a lighter diagnosis or
5 something insignificant, mainly leaving out the main
6 cause of the injury.
7 Q. Who kept these records? It was you or Dr. Relja Mrkajic,
8 or both?
9 A. Both of us, there was not any fixed rule. I think
10 I made more entries than Relja, but he also made entries
11 occasionally.
12 Q. Do you know which has been the final destination of this
13 notebook? Where was it kept, first of all, at the time
14 you used to fill it in?
15 A. We kept it on the only table we had. Later on I put it
16 away in one of the drawers. I do not really know what
17 fate it suffered, what happened to it.
18 Q. All right. Going back to the night when you first
19 arrived at building 22, was the building empty? You
20 said the building was empty when you first arrived
21 there; is that correct?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You told us that you arrived there together with about
24 ten injured prisoners. Did the number of the injured
25 prisoners have a variation in the following days and
Page 5977
1 weeks?
2 A. The number of the injured did not vary very much because
3 there was not any space but occasionally we would use
4 one of those mats, so that the number was more or less
5 steady, ten and then it would go up to 11 or 12. There
6 was not much variation, but the patients changed within
7 that limited number. There were always ten or twelve of
8 them, but they changed.
9 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Mr. Turone, do you mind if we have a
10 break and come back at 12.00?
11 MR. TURONE: All right, your Honour.
12 (11.30 am)
13 (A short break)
14 (12.00 pm)
15 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Mr. Turone, you may continue.
16 MR. TURONE: Thank you, your Honour. Dr. Grubac, before the
17 break we were talking about the number of injured
18 prisoners inside building 22. Can you say approximately
19 with what frequency did new injured people, injured
20 prisoners, arrive?
21 A. I could not say that it happened following a certain
22 specific definite rhythm or order. They came, I do not
23 know following which system, the injured people came to
24 building number 22. We mainly -- I, myself and Dr. Relja
25 Mrkajic had no say in terms of who was to be brought to
Page 5978
1 the building.
2 Q. I mean about the number of prisoners, very approximately
3 what frequency there was about new comings of people.
4 A. To that building prisoners came seeking some kind of
5 medical aid and then they would return to their
6 respective buildings, structures 6 or 9. We would
7 extend the assistance they sought and then they returned
8 to either of those two buildings. Some then came, some
9 of the guards would bring them. Most frequently Delic
10 would bring some people to be hospitalised at the ward
11 or to be in-patients. There would be at the least ten
12 injured people in the ward at any one time.
13 Q. Just to give a general overview, what kind of injuries
14 did these people have?
15 A. They had different injuries. They had injuries which
16 had been inflicted with a hard object. They had burns,
17 they had injuries inflicted with firearms or some
18 infections which were consequent to their injuries.
19 Q. Did any of these prisoners die while they were in the
20 infirmary, I mean building 22?
21 A. In building 22 two of the injured died.
22 Q. Can you say their names?
23 A. They were Petko Mrkajic, Pero, and Bosko Samoukovic.
24 Q. Starting with Mr. Pero Mrkajic, can you say approximately
25 when did he arrive at building 22?
Page 5979
1 A. He arrived at building 22 in the month of June, probably
2 in the second half, immediately after the half of the
3 month.
4 Q. How did he arrive? Was he in a position to walk by
5 himself, or was he brought by other people?
6 A. I think that after all he could walk. As far as I can
7 remember two of the prisoners from building number 6
8 slowly, resting every now and then, brought him, and
9 assisted by them he managed to come to building number
10 22.
11 Q. Did any of these two prisoners accompanying him say
12 anything to you when they brought Pero Mrkajic to the
13 building?
14 A. I know that they said that they had been ordered by
15 someone to transfer him to building number 22, that he
16 had been beaten, viciously beaten up, and that they
17 could no longer hold him there with the other prisoners,
18 but that they had to transfer him to building 22.
19 Q. Where did you put Mr. Pero Mrkajic?
20 A. We put Mr. Pero Mrkajic on a mat near the exit from
21 building 22, on the right-hand side from the entrance,
22 on a mat on the floor.
23 Q. Was Pero Mrkajic conscious when he arrived?
24 A. Yes, he was conscious when he came.
25 Q. Was he in a position to say anything to you?
Page 5980
1 A. Yes, he was able to speak.
2 Q. Can you remember what he said?
3 A. I cannot remember the details, I know that he told me
4 that they had beaten him up and that his injuries had
5 been inflicted in structure number 6.
6 Q. By the way, did you know Mr. Pero Mrkajic from before?
7 Who was he?
8 A. I did, I knew him from before. He was a caterer. He
9 had a restaurant in Bradina.
10 Q. Had you ever treated him before in your professional
11 capacity?
12 A. He was a disabled person in the sense that he could not
13 see from one eye because of an injury that he had
14 sustained early on in his youth. He would often come to
15 me for some prescriptions for some drugs for himself,
16 for blood pressure, for a cold, for some antibiotics or
17 for his wife who was also a chronic patient, had high
18 blood pressure and was also handicapped because she did
19 not have one leg but had a crutch. She had a
20 prosthesis, in fact.
21 Q. As far as you know, had Dr. Relja Mrkajic ever treated
22 Pero Mrkajic before?
23 A. I think so, yes. Relja told me that of late, he had
24 this disorder -- he had sugar diabetes that he could
25 control with tablets. It was not a very serious form of
Page 5981
1 this disease -- was not insulin dependent.
2 Q. Thank you. Can you describe in detail the injuries
3 which were visible on him?
4 A. Pero Mrkajic had many injuries on his body which in fact
5 were large blood haematomata all over his body. He was
6 blue, he had this blood haematomata all over his body.
7 These were the outside injuries. Whether he had any
8 internal ones I was not able to ascertain as I did not
9 have any diagnostic means at my disposal or any method
10 to apply for that.
11 Q. How did you treat Pero Mrkajic?
12 A. Practically, we did not treat him to speak of. While he
13 could still swallow we gave him some pain killers and
14 that was it.
15 Q. Did you treat his diabetes too?
16 A. No, we had no medicaments for diabetes, and apart from
17 that we were unable to diagnose the concentration as we
18 had no methods, diagnostic methods to diagnose the
19 concentration of sugar in his blood or his urine and
20 without such data, even if we had had the medicaments we
21 would not have dared give him any without such data.
22 Q. Did he ever lose consciousness?
23 A. His condition kept slowly and steadily deteriorating so
24 that in a couple of days he lost consciousness and was
25 in a coma.
Page 5982
1 Q. After how many days did he die?
2 A. All in all, perhaps in six or seven days.
3 Q. Did Pero Mrkajic have any relative inside the camp?
4 A. Yes, he had two sons. The two sons of Pero Mrkajic were
5 shut up in building number 9, or rather in tunnel number
6 9. They are Zara Mrkajic, probably his real name is
7 Jarko and Desko Mrkajic, probably Desimir Mrkajic is his
8 full name.
9 Q. Were these two men allowed to see their father or his
10 body?
11 A. When Pero died Hazim Delic brought both of his sons to
12 building number 22 and he told them "say goodbye to your
13 father".
14 Q. Was the body of Pero Mrkajic immediately removed?
15 A. No, his body, the body of Pero Mrkajic was left
16 overnight in building number 22 and it was only the next
17 day, that is to say, me and Dr. Relja, took him out.
18 People came with a hearse, put him in that vehicle and
19 took him away. We cleaned the mat to prepare it for
20 another possible injured person.
21 Q. Was there any investigation into the death of Pero
22 Mrkajic, as far as you know?
23 A. I am not aware that there had been any investigation.
24 As far as we are concerned no one asked us to write some
25 sort of discharge paper or to state the cause or time of
Page 5983
1 death.
2 Q. Did anybody ever ask you what happened to him?
3 A. No, no one, never.
4 Q. Were you asked to fill out a death certificate?
5 A. No, that was not the custom at the camp. Neither I nor
6 Dr. Relja ever filled in any death certificates.
7 Q. All right. Let us now talk about Bosko Samoukovic. Can
8 you say approximately when he arrived at building 22?
9 A. Bosko Samoukovic arrived after Pero Mrkajic. It could
10 be in the middle of July.
11 Q. The middle of July?
12 A. Yes, July, possibly in mid July. I am not sure of the
13 exact time. I think it was in July.
14 Q. All right. How did he arrive? Was he in a position to
15 walk by himself?
16 A. I cannot say exactly how he arrived, but he could not
17 walk, I know that. I do not know how, in what way he
18 had been brought to the ward. I know that two inmates
19 brought him inside and we had a bed prepared for him and
20 they put him on it.
21 Q. Did anybody come and see Samoukovic right after his
22 arrival in number 22?
23 A. Immediately after that, when we put him in the bed,
24 Hazim Delic came and he said to someone, perhaps he was
25 accompanied by one of the guards, to call Landzo Zio
Page 5984
1 Zenga, immediately to see what he had done.
2 Q. What happened then?
3 A. After that, Landzo Zio Zenga did come and looked at the
4 injured person and said to Dr. Relja and myself, "you
5 have to cure him".
6 Q. What do you mean Zio Zenga? Do you mean Esad or Zenga?
7 A. Esad Zio Zenga. Esad Landzo Zenga. I do not know why
8 I always have confusion with this name instead of Esad
9 Landzo Zenga.
10 Q. Do you remember what did Zenga exactly say?
11 A. I believe he said something to that effect, perhaps it
12 is not completely accurate formulation of the exact
13 words he used, but to that effect, "you must treat him.
14 You must see to it that he recovers".
15 Q. Was Bosko Samoukovic conscious when he arrived?
16 A. Yes, he was conscious.
17 Q. Was he in a position to say anything to you?
18 A. He could say a word or two, but he was in such a serious
19 condition that he was actually struggling for life. He
20 had a hard time breathing. He was out of air. He was
21 blue and red in the face. Later he broke out in sweat
22 all over his face. He kept showing his chest with his
23 hands. Sometimes he tried to sit up from his lying
24 position. One gave the impression that there was a man
25 who was unable to breathe.
Page 5985
1 Q. Can you remember anything he might have said during all
2 this?
3 A. He moaned, he indicated -- pointed to his chest.
4 I cannot exactly remember whether he articulated any of
5 his thoughts, whether he asked for anything. I cannot
6 remember.
7 Q. All right. Do you remember any other detail about the
8 injuries which were visible on him?
9 A. I did not thoroughly examine his body nor look it over,
10 but massaged his chest several times with his hands.
11 I gather that he wanted to tell me something and I tried
12 to palpate his thorax, his chest and I could feel that
13 it was not as elastic as was to be expected. On
14 pressing, I could hear some sort of a crackling noise
15 and I concluded that his ribs were broken.
16 Q. How did you treat him?
17 A. It only lasted for a very short time. Practically, we
18 did not really treat him. We only tried to check
19 whether there was any content in his mouth. We tried to
20 put him in what we referred to as the coma position,
21 lying on his side, to prevent him from suffocating on
22 his tongue or some content in the mouth, but he was so
23 upset, he was gasping for air, that it was hard for us
24 to keep him in that position. I do not remember having
25 given him any drugs or medicaments as we practically had
Page 5986
1 none to treat him with.
2 Q. When did Bosko Samoukovic die?
3 A. He died in perhaps 20 or 30 minutes upon arrival at
4 building number 22.
5 Q. Was the body of Bosko Samoukovic immediately removed?
6 A. I cannot remember the details. I cannot remember
7 whether the body was removed immediately after that, but
8 it did not stay overnight in the building number 22.
9 Q. Was there any investigation into the death of Mr. Bosko
10 Samoukovic?
11 A. As far as I know there was no investigation, no one
12 asked me anything, nor was Dr. Relja Mrkajic asked
13 anything about the death of Bosko Samoukovic.
14 Q. Did anybody ask you to fill in a death certificate?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Dr. Grubac, did you ever treat any prisoners who had burn
17 injuries?
18 A. Yes, I did, although this was done more often by my
19 colleague Dr. Relja because this is something that he is
20 more familiar with because he is a specialist for the
21 ear, throat and nose, and he more often treated such
22 wounds, although we were together in the same room.
23 Q. Do you anyway remember approximately how many times did
24 that happen, that people came with burn injuries?
25 A. They came quite often, although we practically had
Page 5987
1 nothing to treat them with. Relja and I myself would
2 remove the scales on their burns, the outer layers and
3 then put a gauze compress -- if we did not have any, we
4 would just bandage it to prevent it from being further
5 infected.
6 Q. Do you remember the names of any prisoners having such
7 burn injuries?
8 A. I could not say exactly by name what prisoners had burns
9 and where, but I do know that there were prisoners who
10 had burns on the palms of their hands, on their legs, on
11 their upper and lower legs, some had burns on their
12 faces, ears. I know that a prisoner came called Cakani,
13 that was his nickname. His surname was Bendzo, I do not
14 know what his first name was exactly. Then there was
15 Djordic Kuljanin, but I cannot say where exactly they
16 had burns. This was mainly burns, as we physicians say,
17 of first and partly second degree covering the skin and
18 some subcutaneous tissue in these burns.
19 Q. You are not in a position to say more details about
20 that, about these people having burns?
21 A. I cannot say the names. I do know that they told us
22 that these burns were inflicted because they had been --
23 gasoline had been poured on them and then lit, or some
24 flammable bands or tapes or cords, as they refer to
25 them, had been put on them, some things which are used
Page 5988
1 in fireworks or in blowing mines in civil engineering
2 works.
3 Q. All right, thank you. Did you always treat prisoners
4 inside building 22 or were there occasions when you went
5 to hangar 6 or tunnel 9?
6 A. Both I and Dr. Relja Mrkajic did occasionally go to
7 hangar number 6, to tunnel number 9, and to the
8 reception where the women were imprisoned.
9 Q. Who asked you to go there, or who brought you there?
10 A. Most frequently one of the guards would go with us.
11 Sometimes nobody went, we could go ourselves, but more
12 often than not one of the guards would go with us. Who
13 gave them the orders to accompany us there I do not
14 know.
15 Q. Could you say very approximately how many times you had
16 occasion to go to hangar 6 for this reason?
17 A. I cannot say exactly how many times I went to hangar
18 number 6, but one could put it in the words "often", or
19 quite a number of times; that would be my definition.
20 Q. Whenever you went there did you notice there prisoners
21 with visible injuries?
22 A. Yes, there were many prisoners with visible injuries
23 there.
24 Q. Can you mention any of them?
25 A. It has just occurred to me, for instance, the name of
Page 5989
1 Simo Jovanovic, probably because I had known that man
2 from before. On one occasion when I went there he was
3 on a kind of a box. He could not move, he was beaten
4 up. He was complaining of not having enough air, that
5 he had pains all over his body and so on.
6 It is difficult to select amongst such a large
7 group of people who were all beaten up, to select any
8 particular one.
9 Q. Were you able to treat Mr. Jovanovic?
10 A. No, I could not treat him. His condition required
11 intensive care in a proper medical establishment, but he
12 did not have the good fortune to be transported to such
13 an institution.
14 Q. Did you point out these conditions to anybody?
15 A. You mean officially?
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. No, we could not inform anyone officially, nor were we
18 in a position to write up any reports about the
19 condition of the injured people.
20 Q. How many times approximately did you happen to go to
21 tunnel 9 to visit prisoners there?
22 A. Tunnel number 9 was under a special regime, to put it
23 so, so I went there two or three times.
24 Q. Do you remember the reason for which you went there?
25 A. Once I went there because one of the guards came to ask
Page 5990
1 us to examine the prisoners to see whether they needed
2 any medicines. I went there a second time. I was asked
3 to make a list of people there who were suffering from
4 grave chronic diseases and maybe once more between these
5 two visits.
6 Q. Did you notice in tunnel 9 prisoners with visible
7 injuries on these occasions?
8 A. I may not be able to describe clearly enough the
9 situation in building number 9. May I describe it, what
10 it looked like, the tunnel?
11 Q. Yes, if you wish, you can, briefly.
12 A. I would like to say that because it is difficult to
13 select any particular injury. It was actually a tunnel
14 which was about 1.5 or 1 metre 20 wide. The height was
15 about 1 metre 50. The ceiling was arched and the whole
16 tunnel was slanting downwards so it was very difficult
17 to walk along it. The prisoners who were there in a
18 half sitting, half lying position, were thrown one on
19 top of the other because of this inclination of the
20 floor, so they could not even stretch out their legs
21 properly. Though I am not very tall I also had to bend
22 down to walk and it was difficult to pass, because there
23 was no room between their bodies and between their legs
24 to go to the end of the tunnel.
25 There was a terrible stench inside. One could
Page 5991
1 hardly breathe and at one end they relieved themselves.
2 They were filthy, in a miserable state, extremely
3 resigned to their state. They themselves were not
4 willing to talk about what was happening to them. It is
5 difficult for me to describe now the injuries that
6 I saw.
7 Q. When you were asked to write down a list of prisoners of
8 tunnel 9 with very bad conditions, how many people did
9 you list, do you remember?
10 A. I was not asked at that time to write down the names of
11 people with serious injuries, but rather people with
12 chronic diseases. I assumed they wanted to have a
13 record of people who had been suffering from a disease
14 from before they came, so I was not asked to list the
15 names of people with injuries, but rather people with
16 previous chronic diseases.
17 Q. Approximately how many people did you list, do you
18 remember?
19 A. Nobody wanted to report such diseases.
20 Q. I see. In a general sense, were you permitted to treat
21 whoever you believed needed treatment?
22 A. No. Let me say once again, our influence was
23 non-existent. We could not decide who we would treat,
24 nor how we would treat them. Dr. Relja and I were
25 prisoners like everyone else, the exception being that
Page 5992
1 we were able to go to these buildings sometimes and
2 occasionally to distribute some of the medicines we had
3 to the injured.
4 Q. Thank you Dr. Grubac. Let us go now to a different
5 issue. Were you ever interrogated by military
6 investigators during your stay in Celebici?
7 A. Yes, on one occasion I was called in to the command
8 building and they took a statement from me.
9 Q. Approximately when did that happen?
10 A. This happened in the first half of June. I think after
11 my return from the 3rd March school in Konjic.
12 Q. You said that this happened in the command building.
13 Who called you out of building 22 in order to take you
14 to the command building?
15 A. One of the guards.
16 Q. Can you say who were the persons or the person who
17 interrogated you?
18 A. The man's name was Mladen Zovko and he was nicknamed
19 Kuhar or "the cook".
20 Q. Was he in uniform?
21 A. Yes, he was in a camouflage uniform.
22 Q. How were you treated during this interrogation?
23 A. Quite correctly.
24 Q. This happened in a room of the command building. During
25 the interrogation were you in a position to see the
Page 5993
1 window of the room -- I mean, do you know where the
2 window of this room was facing?
3 A. The window of the room was facing building 22 and the
4 yard between the command building and building 22.
5 Q. During the interrogation, were you accused of anything
6 specific?
7 A. No, I was not.
8 Q. What did Mr. Mladen Zovko ask you?
9 A. He asked me, as far as I can remember -- this was a very
10 brief interview. He may have put three or four
11 questions to me, my name, where I was, what I had been
12 doing in Bradina, and I think that was all.
13 Q. Did you sign any piece of paper, a statement after this
14 interrogation?
15 A. Yes, after that he gave me the statement to sign and
16 I signed it.
17 Q. Did you see where did Mladen Zovko put your statement?
18 A. I am not sure. I think it was in a file of some sort.
19 Q. Going to another issue, Dr. Grubac, were there any women
20 in the camp?
21 A. Yes, there were several women in the camp.
22 Q. Where were they kept?
23 A. They were kept in the building that we called a kind of
24 reception or a guards' room, right next to the entrance
25 to the camp.
Page 5994
1 Q. Did you ever visit them in the reception building?
2 A. I visited them two or three times.
3 Q. Did you have any conversation with any of them?
4 A. Yes, I was able to talk to all of them because the guard
5 opened the room and let me in and he did not come in, he
6 waited outside.
7 Q. Can you remember some specific conversation with any of
8 these women?
9 A. Actually, they told me that I should go there because
10 one of the imprisoned women had some pains because she
11 had a stone in her kidney or something like that, and
12 that is why I had to go there, and indeed on one
13 occasion she did have such pains, so I went back to
14 building 22. We still had some medicines, so I gave her
15 a spasmolytic in the form of a shot, an injection and
16 that is how I spoke to them. I was called in two more
17 times, though I think there was no real reason, because
18 of any disease, but they wanted to get in touch with me
19 to try and learn what would come of them and all of us.
20 On one such occasion, the first time I went,
21 Grozda Cecez told me that all the women were in a very
22 difficult condition and I was able to observe that.
23 They were crying, they were sitting on some kind of
24 shelves. Though I know all those women they did not
25 wish to communicate with them. I had the feeling that
Page 5995
1 they were ashamed, and when I asked Grozda what was
2 wrong with them she told me they were being taken out
3 every night and raped.
4 Q. Dr. Grubac, was there ever a period of time when there
5 was no food at all at the camp for the prisoners for
6 some reason?
7 A. Yes, the food was very bad, but it was also small in
8 quantity, and it would happen that we would go without
9 food altogether for several days. On one occasion this
10 went on for three or four days. We heard later on in
11 the camp that this was due to something that had
12 happened on the road to Repovci, some policemen had been
13 killed and apparently the people in the camp felt that
14 the Serbs had killed them who were in hiding in the
15 environs of Bradina, but apart from that occasion it
16 would happen several times that we would go without food
17 for two or three days.
18 Q. Do you remember any of the women complaining about this
19 lack of food?
20 A. No, I do not remember the women speaking about food in
21 particular.
22 Q. Dr. Grubac, did you have any chance to communicate with
23 your wife during your stay in Celebici?
24 A. No, I could not communicate with her, but I used some
25 connections I had, if I may call them that, through the
Page 5996
1 guards so I would send her messages, and on one occasion
2 I managed to send her a little letter, a piece of paper
3 telling her not to come to Celebici because something
4 bad could happen to her.
5 Q. So you sent a written message. Through whom did you
6 send it?
7 A. I sent it through a guard whom I had known and who knew
8 her, but I would not like to say his name.
9 Q. All right, Dr. Grubac. Can you say approximately when
10 did that happen?
11 A. This happened -- the messages, I sent her messages in
12 June and July, but this written note was sent, I think,
13 in the second half of June.
14 Q. Did your wife ever come to visit you at the camp?
15 A. Yes, she came once.
16 Q. Only once?
17 A. Only once, yes.
18 Q. Can you say approximately when did that happen?
19 A. This was the second half of July, prior to my leaving
20 the camp, maybe seven or ten days before I left the
21 camp.
22 Q. In which place inside the camp did you meet your wife?
23 A. In one of the premises in the command building.
24 Q. Who called you to go there?
25 A. One of the guards.
Page 5997
1 Q. You got a room in the command building, you told us.
2 Who was in that room when you arrived there?
3 A. When I arrived there Pavo Mucic was there and my myself,
4 Gordana. I am not sure whether the secretary was there,
5 this woman who was working in the command building.
6 I think she was not present.
7 Q. Did Mr. Mucic remain there during the conversation
8 between you and your wife?
9 A. Yes, he did.
10 Q. How long did the conversation last, approximately?
11 A. Maybe altogether not more than 15 or 20 minutes.
12 Q. Could your wife bring you anything, I mean food or
13 clothes or something?
14 A. She brought some food, maybe a shirt and some underwear,
15 and her sister-in-law came with her. She did not enter
16 the room, but later on she asked Pavo and then he let
17 her come in to visit her husband, that is the brother of
18 my wife.
19 Q. Dr. Grubac, in your testimony, you have mentioned today
20 Mr. Hazim Delic. Did you know him from before the war?
21 A. Yes, I knew him before the war.
22 Q. How did you know him?
23 A. I knew his father Ibro before. I cannot really recall
24 how we met. I think he was treated by my colleague,
25 Ahmed Jusuftbegovic who was a specialist in internal
Page 5998
1 medicine. I may have helped him a little when he was
2 due to retire. His father was a carpenter, so both he
3 and Hazim put some wooden boards in my home, and I also
4 visited them at their home several times because Hazim's
5 mother was ill and I treated her for a time.
6 Q. What was Mr. Delalic's position in the camp?
7 A. Delalic was the deputy commander of the camp.
8 Q. How do you know that?
9 JUDGE JAN: Do you mean Delic or Delalic?
10 MR. TURONE: I am talking about Delic. I am sorry. What was
11 Mr. Delic's position?
12 A. I thought you were thinking of Delic. He was deputy
13 commander of the camp.
14 Q. How do you know that?
15 A. The guards addressed him as such. Nobody told us
16 officially what people's positions were. We learnt this
17 from their behaviour, from the attitudes they had and
18 the way in which the guards addressed them.
19 Q. When you first came to the camp did you notice anything
20 about his legs? Did he walk normally?
21 A. A day after my arrival to Celebici I met Hazim Delic in
22 building number 6. Knowing him I thought I could
23 address him and I did, and I told him, "here I am", and
24 whether my colleague Ahmed Jusuftbegovic was aware that
25 I was there and I asked him if he could inform him and
Page 5999
1 help me. At that time he was carrying a crutch under
2 his armpit. He said his leg had been injured; he was
3 limping a little bit and using this crutch.
4 Q. You also mentioned Zenga. Did you know him from before
5 the war?
6 A. No, I never saw him before the war -- rather I did not
7 know him from before the war.
8 Q. How did you get to know his name?
9 A. From somebody in the camp. At the time I thought his
10 name was not Esad but Zio, that is why I confuse the two
11 names. That is why I sometimes call him Zio, but we all
12 called him by his nickname Zenga. So I cannot tell you
13 exactly who it was who told me his name was Esad Landzo
14 Zenga. So we knew that. I think there was another
15 guard with the same surname, Landzo.
16 Q. Did you ever see this other one?
17 A. I do not know, I really cannot confirm that. I do not
18 even know whether he existed. I seem to recall that he
19 may have existed, but I am not quite sure whether there
20 was another guard by the same surname. But it seems to
21 me that there may have been another one, but I am not
22 sure what is the truth about that.
23 Q. Did you ever get to know the nickname of this other one?
24 A. No.
25 Q. What was the position of Zenga in the camp, as far as
Page 6000
1 you know?
2 A. I think he was a guard, like all the other guards.
3 Q. All right. You say that building 22 had two windows
4 facing the entrance of tunnel 9. Was the position of
5 these windows such as to allow you to see easily
6 outside?
7 A. Yes, actually we could not look out easily because the
8 windows were quite high up near the ceiling, so they
9 were not at the normal height as windows in an
10 apartment, they were higher up, nearer the ceiling. But
11 only through the window to the right of the entrance
12 into the hangar could we clearly see the entrance to
13 building number 9, or rather tunnel number 9.
14 Q. Did you ever see anything particular looking out of this
15 window facing tunnel 9?
16 A. Now that you ask me, I just remembered that this Risto
17 Mrkajic, the young man whose name I could not recall a
18 moment ago, he would often look through the window
19 because his father Nikola Mrkajic was imprisoned in
20 building number 9. He was almost on duty on that
21 window, though other prisoners and patients who were
22 mobile would stand up on their beds and look through the
23 window. We could see sometimes what was happening in
24 front of tunnel number 9.
25 Q. What about you yourself? Did you ever look out of this
Page 6001
1 window and see yourself what happened in front of tunnel
2 9?
3 A. Yes, I did. I looked through that window often and
4 I watched what was happening in front of number 9.
5 Q. Can you say what you saw on these occasions when you
6 looked out of the window?
7 A. Several times I saw the guards beating somebody, one of
8 the prisoners from the tunnel, in front of its entrance.
9 Q. Could you recognise any of the prisoners being beaten in
10 front of tunnel 9, or not?
11 A. No, I could not recognise the prisoners that were being
12 beaten.
13 Q. Could you recognise any of the persons beating the
14 prisoners in front of tunnel 9?
15 A. Several times Hazim Delic was among them.
16 Q. Could you see with what did Mr. Delic beat prisoners on
17 these occasions?
18 A. Most frequently he beat them with a baseball bat.
19 Q. Could you say approximately how many times you observed
20 Mr. Delic with that baseball bat?
21 A. I saw him often with a baseball bat. It was like a
22 symbol. He often carried this bat, and I think I saw
23 him twice beating prisoners in front of building number
24 9 with the baseball bat.
25 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: I think that is a convenient place to
Page 6002
1 stop now for the lunch break. We will come back at
2 2.30.
3 MR. TURONE: Yes, your Honour.
4 (1.00 pm)
5 (Adjourned until 2.30 pm)
6
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Page 6003
1 (2.30 pm)
2 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
3 You may proceed, Mr. Turone.
4 MR. TURONE: Thank you, your Honour. Dr. Grubac, during the
5 whole of your stay at Celebici, what did you observe
6 being actually Mr. Mucic's role in the camp?
7 MR. OLUJIC: Objection, your Honours. The witness has
8 already answered this question.
9 JUDGE JAN: He has, in fact.
10 MR. TURONE: My idea is that we have been asking about the
11 very first day in which capacity he did something, but
12 if this is enough, I will go to another question.
13 I want now to have him explain what else he might have
14 observed during the whole of his stay at Celebici about
15 the role of Mr. Mucic.
16 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Do you disagree that he has answered
17 the question before?
18 MR. TURONE: No, I agree that he has answered the question
19 before.
20 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Do you have any other subsequent
21 questions? It is not necessary to ask the same
22 question.
23 MR. TURONE: I will pass to another question, your Honour.
24 How frequently did you see Mr. Mucic in the camp?
25 A. I saw him very frequently.
Page 6004
1 Q. What could you observe him doing at the camp?
2 A. From the position where I was I could not see what he
3 was doing unless I saw him in front of the command
4 building, or if he was entering our building number 22.
5 He had, and I will explain this, a bit -- he was wont to
6 come to building 22, the guards would then open the
7 metal door. He would say "keep the door open that way"
8 and we also liked it, because in that way the space
9 could be ventilated at least a little and we could see
10 what was happening in front of the building. Sometimes
11 he would come inside to building 22. He would greet me
12 and Dr. Relja and sometimes some of the injured people
13 and often he would shoot at a paper target in front of
14 the building from a pistol. Sometimes vehicles with
15 foreign licences -- he would come to the camp in a
16 vehicle with foreign licence plates, sometimes on a
17 motorbike, and he also had his driver driving a van
18 which he used, and it also served for other
19 transportation.
20 Q. Was he usually in uniform?
21 A. Not usually, he was always in camouflage uniform.
22 Q. Did you have occasions to talk to him often?
23 A. He would often say hello, he would ask a question or two
24 when he came into building number 22. Twice he asked me
25 to come to the building where the camp command was.
Page 6005
1 Both times inter alia he asked me if I knew, if I had
2 known from before Jasmin Guska, the head of the MUP, and
3 whether he had been my patient and whether he was a sane
4 person.
5 Q. How often did Mr. Mucic come to building 22
6 approximately?
7 A. He came often, I could not say the exact number of
8 times, but he would drop in quite frequently.
9 Q. Just to say hello to you or for any other reason?
10 A. I do not remember him coming for any other reason except
11 to say hello. I do not know what other intentions he
12 might have had, if any.
13 Q. When Mr. Mucic came to building 22, did he ask any
14 questions concerning how persons received their
15 injuries, either to you or to the prisoners?
16 A. He never asked that, such questions. I personally
17 gained the impression that he was not interested at all
18 in that. I even gained the impression that he was not
19 at all interested generally in what was happening in
20 that building. He never asked any question from which
21 I could conclude that he was interested in anything
22 regarding the prisoners.
23 Q. Did he ever bring any medicines?
24 A. I do not remember whether he ever brought any medicines.
25 Q. Did you ever ask him to bring medicines?
Page 6006
1 A. No, we were in no position to ask for anything from him.
2 Q. All right. You indicated previously that on 22nd July,
3 you were permitted to leave the camp. Can you describe
4 in detail what happened that day?
5 A. That day some time after noon, in the afternoon in fact,
6 Zejnil Delalic came to the camp. Some of the guards
7 came to building 22 and asked me to come to the command
8 building. I went there in one of the official rooms.
9 I found Zejnil Delalic and Hazim Delic. We greeted each
10 other and Delalic asked Hazim to leave the room because
11 he had to talk to me about something. Hazim left the
12 room and I myself and Zejnil Delalic remained in the
13 room.
14 He asked me how I was, what I was doing, and he
15 said that my wife had called and she had asked him to
16 come and talk to me and to see whether he could release
17 me from the camp. He said that she could not come
18 immediately -- that he could not come immediately, that
19 he would come in a few days, and he also added that she
20 had called some seven or six days before that. But he
21 also added that he was not able to come before he came,
22 and he said "I have now taken this opportunity to come
23 and talk to you to see what is in your file and to see
24 whether I can have you released". He then told me that
25 he had inspected my file, he had a folder in front of
Page 6007
1 him and he said to me, "in this file, there is nothing
2 special, so I will release you from the camp". He also
3 told me, "tonight they will come to take you and take
4 you out of the camp", so I said goodbye to him and
5 I returned to building number 22. He also told me that
6 he would also release Dr. Relja Mrkajic. I returned to
7 building number 22. There I talked to the injured
8 people a bit. I told them that Zejnil Delalic had come
9 and he had said he would release me and Relja and as of
10 that night, they would probably remain alone.
11 In the evening on that same day, I cannot exactly
12 say at what time precisely, perhaps at 9.00 or 10.00 pm,
13 a Jeep came, Zejnil Delalic's Jeep. They opened the
14 door to the building and some of the guards filled into
15 these charge documents which he gave us and said to us,
16 "you as doctors have every reason to buy drinks for
17 everyone. You are leaving the camp". He gave two slips
18 of paper to me and Dr. Mrkajic. He told us, "get ready,
19 get your things if you have any, collect your things and
20 now you will be taken home".
21 Q. Before going on in this account, Dr. Grubac, how long did
22 the conversation with Mr. Delalic last in the command
23 building?
24 A. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes.
25 Q. Approximately at what time did the guard come to you
Page 6008
1 then later on?
2 A. Somewhere around 9.00 or 10.00 pm.
3 Q. You said he had two documents concerning you and
4 Dr. Relja Mrkajic; is that correct?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Which documents were they?
7 A. They were our discharge papers, and I sent a photostated
8 copy of my discharge document to this Tribunal when they
9 asked me to.
10 Q. By whom was this release document signed?
11 A. The discharge documents were signed by Zejnil Delalic.
12 Q. All right. Now may I ask this document to be marked for
13 identification with number, I believe, 169. The
14 document was already provided to the Defence lawyers,
15 with copies for your Honours. (Handed). Please put the
16 document on the ELMO and show it to the witness.
17 Dr. Grubac, would you please look at this document and
18 tell the court whether you recognise it?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. What is this document?
21 A. This is the certificate that I was released from the
22 Celebici prison.
23 Q. Is this the paper you received from the guard the
24 evening of July 22nd?
25 A. Yes, that is a copy of the paper which I received in the
Page 6009
1 evening of July 22nd in building 22 in Celebici.
2 MR. TURONE: Thank you. Your Honour, I tender Exhibit 169
3 for admission.
4 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Yes.
5 MR. TURONE: On this document, Dr. Grubac, what does the
6 handwriting "Konjic Celebici" mean?
7 A. That means that my movement was limited only to the area
8 of Konjic, Celebici, and that I was not to leave Konjic
9 or move along any other route.
10 Q. What do the two handwritten lines mean, I mean the ones
11 at the bottom of the paper, near the signature?
12 A. They mean that -- Zejnil explained it to us that we
13 would rest at our homes for 10 or 15 days or so and that
14 afterwards they would come for us and drive us to the
15 Celebici camp to care about the health of the prisoners
16 and inmates in that compound.
17 Q. All right. What happened to you after you had received
18 the release documents from the guard. You were talking
19 about a Jeep. Please go ahead with your account, very
20 slowly, please.
21 A. We gathered the few things that we had in plastic bags.
22 We said goodbye to the injured patients, and we sat in
23 this Jeep which used to drive Zejnil Delalic earlier and
24 which he had sent for us and the driver took us to
25 Zejnil Delalic's house in Konjic.
Page 6010
1 Q. You mean both you and Dr. Relja Mrkajic?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Can you describe the house of Mr. Delalic and where it
4 was?
5 A. The house of Zejnil Delalic is in the town of Konjic, at
6 the exit towards the south, under the city motel on the
7 down side of the petrol station, at the exit of the city
8 of Konjic towards the city of Mostar, and the river
9 Nerveta flows across the house on the other side.
10 Q. What happened when you arrived there?
11 A. We entered through a metal gate into the yard of the
12 house and the driver and the guard took us up these
13 stairs and inside the house of Zejnil Delalic.
14 Q. Did you meet Mr. Delalic there?
15 A. Yes, Zejnil Delalic waited for us in the house, received
16 us in his house and his brother Dzemal was also there.
17 Q. What did Mr. Zejnil Delalic exactly tell you on this
18 occasion?
19 A. He greeted us, he told us to take a seat and we sat in
20 the sitting room of his house. He offered us drinks, we
21 had some drinks. He told us that now we were out of the
22 camp that we needed to rest for a while and that they
23 would start coming for us again to take us to Celebici
24 to see to the health of the inmates.
25 Q. Was it on this occasion that he explained to you the
Page 6011
1 meaning of the two handwritten lines at the bottom of
2 the release document?
3 A. I do not remember the details exactly. I think he told
4 us that we would be at our homes, that we needed to look
5 after ourselves, then take care we could not leave
6 Konjic. We could only be in Konjic and Celebici and he
7 also asked Dr. Relja Mrkajic, and Dr. Relja Mrkajic asked
8 Delalic to change the setup because he did not have a
9 place to stay in Konjic, and he would stay with his
10 relatives in Ostrozac, so that he could move from
11 Ostrozac to Celebici. I believe Zejnil corrected this
12 on the certificate or agreed that that would be so.
13 Q. How long did this conversation last?
14 A. It did not last long, we had a drink, whiskey or coffee,
15 some other drink perhaps. We talked a bit, then the
16 driver took me to the flat of the parents of my wife and
17 Relja to the flat of some friends of his. I think it
18 did not last more than half a hour.
19 Q. Dr. Grubac, did you know Mr. Zejnil Delalic from before
20 the war?
21 A. Yes, I did, I knew him much earlier than that.
22 Q. Can you explain how you knew him?
23 A. We had a number of joint friends, we met occasionally,
24 and these shared friends of ours came with me to his
25 house -- I came with them to his house several times and
Page 6012
1 I knew some members of his family. I knew a brother of
2 his who I had treated. Once or twice I had been to the
3 house of his parents and perhaps also the house of his
4 sister, and we perhaps also met in town.
5 Q. Dr. Grubac, was there a time when you were interviewed by
6 the Bosnian television?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Can you say approximately when that happened?
9 A. I cannot locate it exactly in terms of time. The
10 arrival of Bosnian television to the camp in Celebici;
11 I cannot say whether this was in July or possibly in
12 August after I had been released from the camp and when
13 I came to the camp to treat the prisoners.
14 Q. Where inside the camp did this TV interview take place?
15 A. I do not know whether the TV crew with a camera entered
16 the building, I think they did. They filmed the
17 interior of the building and in front of building 22
18 they talked to me and Relja.
19 Q. Do you remember the names of the journalists or
20 journalist who interviewed you?
21 A. I do remember the name of the journalist. I do not
22 remember the name of the cameraman and the other
23 technical crew members. This was a crew of Jadranka
24 Milosevic and Zvonko Maric.
25 Q. Were they two men or a man and a woman?
Page 6013
1 A. Jadranka Milosevic is a woman.
2 Q. Did anybody ask you to give this interview?
3 A. I did not understand you well. You mean before they
4 came or when they were there, whether I would grant them
5 an interview?
6 Q. Either before or at the moment they were there; did
7 anybody come and tell you you should give an interview
8 to Bosnian television, or something like that?
9 A. No.
10 Q. How come, how did that happen that this TV crew arrived
11 and interviewed you?
12 A. I really do not know how to explain this, how they came,
13 who called them, who invited them, how they came to the
14 camp. I really do not know.
15 Q. Did the journalist directly come to you and ask you to
16 give the interview?
17 A. With them were Zejnil Delalic and Pavo Mucic. I do not
18 know for sure which one of them said, I believe it was
19 Zejnil or Pavo, he said, "this is a TV crew. You will
20 be interviewed and they will film the building", and
21 that was all.
22 Q. What did Mr. Delalic and Mr. Mucic do during the
23 interview? Were they present?
24 A. Yes, perhaps Zejnil was present for a time, I cannot
25 recall for sure. Then he left, I believe, the command
Page 6014
1 building, but Pavo was present all the time and he was
2 also filming something during this interview with his
3 own camera, while they were filming, the crew, I mean.
4 He had a camera of his own and he was filming us and
5 them.
6 Q. All right. Did any of them, either Mr. Mucic and
7 Mr. Delalic, also give an interview to this TV crew, as
8 far as you could personally observe?
9 A. While we were giving this interview they were not
10 interviewed. Maybe before or after they had finished
11 with us.
12 Q. What questions did the journalist ask you?
13 A. The questions were something like this, how many injured
14 there were, how they had been injured, how long they
15 have been treated, what their present condition was, do
16 we have medicines, what is the situation in the
17 building. Those were the questions, more or less.
18 Q. What did you answer to those questions?
19 A. We answered as they expected us to answer.
20 Q. Did you always answer the truth to her questions?
21 A. No, partly what we said was true, such as the things --
22 where the injured had come from, how badly injured they
23 were and that sort of thing, but the rest, we answered
24 according to their expectations, because we feared the
25 consequences, which means our other replies were not
Page 6015
1 truthful or correct.
2 Q. Can you specifically remember some specific question to
3 which you answered the truth and some specific question
4 to which you gave an untruthful answer?
5 A. I answered truthfully when I said that the injured were
6 there, who had been injured when being brought to the
7 Celebici, who had been injured and beaten in the camp
8 and in the sports hall in Konjic. As for the other
9 questions, whether we had the medicines we needed, how
10 they felt, what the situation was like, that I did not
11 answer correctly. I said that we had medicines, that
12 the situation was good, that their condition was good.
13 Q. Why did you answer that way?
14 A. I had some experience from the camp from before that if
15 anyone were to say something that was true or tried to
16 tell the truth, he was punished.
17 Q. Approximately how long did the interview last?
18 A. They filmed the building itself inside, then they spoke
19 to us and after that we all sat in one of the rooms in
20 the command building. This whole thing may have lasted
21 up to one hour.
22 Q. What about sitting in the command building? Who was
23 present there?
24 A. The reporters were there, Ms. Milosevic and Mr. Maric,
25 then there was Zejnil Delalic, Pavo Mucic. I do not
Page 6016
1 remember exactly whether Delic was there or anyone
2 else. There were some other people, some other
3 assistants there, the cameraman and others.
4 Q. You said Mr. Mucic was filming the interview with his own
5 camera. Was this the only time you saw Mr. Mucic filming
6 with his own camera inside the camp?
7 A. On that occasion he was filming, but I also saw him
8 carrying the camera, so that I think in addition to that
9 time, I did see him carrying the camera or putting it
10 into his car or taking it out of his car.
11 Q. All right. Did you observe Mr. Zejnil Delalic being
12 present at the camp in other occasions besides the ones
13 you have already described?
14 A. Zejnil would come to the camp occasionally because, as
15 I have just described, we could peep under the door and
16 see a part of the plateau between the command building
17 and our own building, and occasionally the door was open
18 so that we could see who was coming in or going out of
19 those buildings. On several occasions, I might say,
20 several times we saw his car. It was a white Jeep, and
21 also I saw him accompanied by some other uniformed men
22 entering the camp.
23 Q. Can you say approximately how many times you might have
24 seen Mr. Delalic in the camp in this way on these
25 occasions?
Page 6017
1 A. I could not tell you the exact number. I would say
2 several times.
3 Q. Did you have any other conversation with him inside the
4 camp besides what you said already?
5 A. Yes, later on I and my wife went to his house and spoke
6 to him --
7 Q. I am saying inside Celebici camp.
8 A. No, I did not have any personal contact with Zejnil
9 Delalic in the camp except for the one I have described.
10 Q. You have indicated that you continued to treat prisoners
11 in Celebici after your release. How did you get to the
12 camp on those occasions?
13 A. Most often Pavo Mucic's driver Buric would come with a
14 van to pick me up and drive me to Celebici, and once or
15 twice Hazim Delic came to pick me up, and Pavo came
16 twice also, as he was going to the camp, he took me with
17 him.
18 Q. Were you going daily to the Celebici camp?
19 A. This lasted -- this did not last very long, maybe ten
20 days, maybe every other day.
21 Q. So it was not on a daily basis during this period of
22 time?
23 A. Perhaps during that period of ten days I skipped one
24 day, but otherwise it was daily.
25 Q. In this period of time, were you transported together
Page 6018
1 with Dr. Relja Mrkajic?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Can you explain how come this lasted only ten days?
4 A. After that I was told that there was no need for me to
5 go to the Celebici camp, but it would be easier for them
6 to pick up Dr. Relja Mrkajic in Ostrozac because it was
7 closer and take him to Celebici and that I should go to
8 the camp in the sports hall in Konjic and treat the
9 prisoners there.
10 Q. You say that a couple of times you were transported to
11 Celebici by Mr. Mucic. Did he used to drive you directly
12 to Celebici?
13 A. No, both times he stopped in front of Zejnil Delalic's
14 house, went inside to Zejnil Delalic's house, stayed
15 there for about 10 or 15 minutes, then came back and we
16 would continue the ride to Celebici.
17 Q. Did Mr. Mucic ever say anything to you during these
18 drives?
19 A. He would talk informally. He would joke sometimes and
20 on one occasion he said that he had certain obligations
21 with respect to Zejnil, that Zejnil had helped him when
22 he needed it, when he went to work to Germany and
23 Austria and that he felt to a certain extent indebted to
24 Zejnil Delalic.
25 Q. All right. Dr. Grubac, did you have any further occasion
Page 6019
1 to see Mr. Zejnil Delalic after all this?
2 A. No, you mean --
3 Q. We were saying something about your wife and you?
4 A. Yes. I thought you meant in the camp itself. No, after
5 that I saw Zejnil Delalic once again.
6 Q. When did that happen?
7 A. It was somewhere around September 1992, perhaps the
8 second half of September.
9 Q. How did that happen?
10 A. I was staying at my in-laws, their apartment in Konjic
11 and because of the situation we were in we were trying
12 to find a way of getting out of Konjic. We knew that we
13 could not leave without somebody's assistance, so my
14 wife and I agreed, and on the basis of our contact with
15 some people, we came to the conclusion that Zejnil could
16 help us to leave Konjic.
17 So we called up on the phone several times and my
18 wife managed, through his secretary, to schedule an
19 appointment; actually he said he would receive us one
20 evening in September, I think it was in the second half
21 of September, that we should come to his home at a fixed
22 time.
23 Q. Did you go to his home for this appointment?
24 A. Yes, my wife and I went there on that day in the evening
25 to Zejnil Delalic's house.
Page 6020
1 Q. What did you want to tell him exactly?
2 A. We simply wanted to ask him to help us so that my wife,
3 my children and I could leave Konjic and cross over into
4 liberated territory.
5 Q. Why did you choose exactly Mr. Delalic to ask that and
6 not another person?
7 A. Because we believed that Delalic was a person who had it
8 in his power to do it, and on the other hand, we
9 believed that he would want to do it.
10 Q. What did Mr. Delalic answer?
11 A. We came to his home, we sat there for a while. We
12 talked to him. We joked a little perhaps, and we told
13 him what the purpose of our visit was. We told him
14 quite frankly that we would like to leave Konjic. He
15 said that perhaps I might be able to leave, that he
16 could fix that since I had been in the camp, but that it
17 would be more difficult to arrange for my wife and
18 children to leave. I joked then and said, "well that is
19 no problem, put my wife and children in the camp then
20 they will be detainees as well and you will have no
21 problems with them". Then he told us to wait a little
22 to see whether it could be done, and then he asked me,
23 "why do you want to leave Konjic? Let me fix it so
24 that you can work in our military hospital in Igman or
25 Tarcin". I said that I would not like to work in those
Page 6021
1 hospitals, but that all that I was asking was for him to
2 help us leave Konjic. He did not promise to do that and
3 that is how we left. What he said was "well, we will
4 see what can be done".
5 Q. Did you get to know what was Mr. Delalic's official
6 position?
7 A. Yes, talking to Delalic he joked a little and he showed
8 us some papers, a fax message, I think it was, sent to
9 him by people from Borci, from the Serbian held
10 territory. He said, "look how many commanders have
11 signed" as if there were several thousand of them over
12 there, whereas I know in fact there are much less. Then
13 he showed us some extracts from the newspapers where the
14 Croats had criticised him, and I cannot remember whether
15 at the top of the fax it said "to the commander of the
16 first tactical group: Zejnil Delalic", or was this
17 written on one of the answers he was sending to them as
18 the signature, "commander of the first tactical group".
19 I think that also the articles he showed us from the
20 newspapers referred to him as the commander of the First
21 Tactical Group.
22 In any event, that was the first time that I saw
23 this post being described as commander of the First
24 Tactical Group of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Early
25 on when we went to see him, we did not go there because
Page 6022
1 we knew that that was his position, but simply because
2 we had learnt from our communication with others that he
3 had the power to help us, but it was then that I learnt
4 that he was commander of the First Tactical Group.
5 Q. Why did Mr. Delalic show these papers to you?
6 A. He was showing us these excerpts to complain why the
7 Croats were criticising him and these others also to
8 joke that the Serbian Army from Borci had signed a paper
9 with so many signatures, as if to show that they were so
10 strong, whereas in fact he knew they were much less
11 powerful.
12 MR. TURONE: Thank you, Dr. Grubac. I have no other questions
13 in examination-in-chief, your Honour. Thank you very
14 much.
15 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: How are you arranging your
16 cross-examination?
17 MR. O'SULLIVAN: We will proceed in this way, your Honours:
18 first counsel for Mr. Delalic, second counsel for
19 Mr. Mucic, third counsel for Mr. Delic and fourth counsel
20 for Mr. Landzo.
21 MS. RESIDOVIC: May it please the court?
22 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: You may proceed.
23 Cross-examined by MS. RESIDOVIC
24 Q. Thank you. Good afternoon, Dr. Grubac.
25 A. Good afternoon.
Page 6023
1 Q. As you probably know my name is Edina Residovic, I am
2 Defence counsel for Mr. Zejnil Delalic. Mr. Grubac,
3 before I start with my questions I usually warn the
4 witness of a fact which is very important to be able to
5 follow these proceedings and for a better understanding
6 of my questions and your answers; namely the two of us
7 speak the same language that we understand, and it would
8 be very easy for us to communicate quickly with my
9 questions and your answers.
10 However, the court, for whose benefit you are
11 here, has to know what we are talking about, and it is
12 therefore necessary for every question and every answer
13 to be translated, so I would like to ask you, when
14 I finish my question, for you to wait until you hear in
15 the earphones the English translation of my question,
16 after which, will you please answer that question and
17 I too will behave accordingly. Have I made myself
18 clear?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Mr. Grubac, in the course of the direct examination you
21 said that you originally came from Montenegro but that
22 you spent a long time living in Konjic?
23 A. Yes, I am originally from Montenegro, but I lived in
24 Konjic from 1965 until 1992. That is where I formed my
25 family as well, and probably I would still be there if
Page 6024
1 what happened had not happened.
2 Q. Most of that time you spent in Konjic as a doctor, is
3 that not so?
4 A. I did not quite understand your question.
5 Q. Throughout your time in Konjic, you were working as a
6 doctor?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. For a time you were also the general manager of the
9 health centre in Konjic; is that correct?
10 A. Yes, that is true.
11 Q. At the time the health centre had about 50 doctors and
12 dentists?
13 A. I am not sure what you mean when you say "then" "?
14 Q. At the time you were the manager.
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. In the more remote areas of the municipality you had
17 local outpatients wards?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. As a doctor and the manager of the health centre you
20 virtually visited every nook and corner of the
21 municipality?
22 A. Yes, that is so.
23 Q. You were familiar with many people in Konjic and also a
24 large number of citizens of Konjic knew you well?
25 A. Yes, that is so.
Page 6025
1 Q. You were personally acquainted with many, if one might
2 call them so, important people in Konjic who performed
3 important political public offices in Konjic?
4 A. Yes, that is so.
5 Q. You yourself were a prominent figure in your town, were
6 you not?
7 A. I am not sure I would describe myself as being very
8 committed, but I was committed.
9 Q. You were so involved that you were familiar with the
10 structure of the main bodies in the municipalities and
11 the main holders of offices in the municipality?
12 A. Yes, that is so.
13 Q. Actually, you too, as a prestigious doctor and the
14 manager of the health centre, you were one of the more
15 prominent figures in the town of Konjic?
16 A. One might put it that way.
17 Q. Before the outbreak of the war you were replaced or you
18 abandoned your position as doctor and it was then that
19 Dr. Ahmed Jusufbegovic was appointed manager, is that not
20 so?
21 A. Yes, that is so.
22 Q. And Dr. Ahmed Jusufbegovic was your friend and the
23 witness at your wedding?
24 A. Yes, that is true.
25 Q. He is one of your friends who, like you, was a friend of
Page 6026
1 Mr. Delalic's?
2 A. Yes, that is so.
3 Q. And Mr. Delalic was acquainted with and was friendly with
4 some other doctors from your health centre?
5 A. That is correct.
6 Q. You know that as early as April 1992 it became clear to
7 many people, including yourself, that this area of
8 Konjic would also be swept by some unwelcome and perhaps
9 war operations, in fact?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. However, you belong to those citizens of Konjic who
12 tried, nevertheless, despite the circumstances, to
13 restore balance to interethnic relationships and to
14 prevent a conflict breaking out?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Some people formally organised themselves to do
17 something in that direction?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. It was along those lines that the forum of citizens was
20 formed, which included a number of prominent figures,
21 journalists, doctors, public figures and so on; is that
22 correct?
23 A. It is.
24 Q. And you, too, were a member of that forum?
25 A. Yes.
Page 6027
1 Q. However, Mr. Grubac, you must certainly know that already
2 in the first half of April a large number of
3 inhabitants, Serbs from Konjic, started to leave and to
4 group together in certain areas of the municipality such
5 as Donje Selo, Bradina, Borci and other local
6 communities or villages in which the Serbs had a
7 majority?
8 A. Yes, that is true, but I would add that this was not
9 being done only by Serbs but that this was also being
10 done by Muslims and Croats.
11 Q. You probably know that that was the time when some
12 adverse events were taking place in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
13 due to which a state of imminent danger of war is
14 proclaimed?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. In view of those conditions, the state and the
17 authorities probably seek to make sure that able bodied
18 men do not depart from their places of residence.
19 A. I would not put it in the way that you have put it.
20 Q. Are you aware that the local authorities in Konjic
21 started to prevent this movement of the population and
22 that a decision to that effect was passed?
23 A. I am not aware that this was done at the level of the
24 authorities, but that they did restrict movement, that
25 I am aware of.
Page 6028
1 Q. But as a person who was active you must have known that
2 in mid April a general mobilisation was proclaimed in
3 Konjic?
4 A. I do not know whether it was exactly the date you have
5 given, but I know that there was some kind of a
6 mobilisation.
7 Q. Mr. Grubac, you have stated to the court in the way you
8 have described it that you were living and working in
9 Konjic up until 6th or 7th May when, with your wife, you
10 went to Bradina where your children were already, is
11 that so?
12 A. Yes. Perhaps one might explain this a little. On
13 6th or 7th May I did not go to Bradina, I went to
14 Bradina for the holidays, for the May day holidays to
15 visit my children.
16 Q. But that is when you stopped going to work?
17 A. After the 6th or 7th, yes, that is correct.
18 Q. Thank you. In view that after May 1st until the 6th or
19 7th you went to Konjic, you certainly witnessed the
20 daily shelling of the town which began on May 4th.
21 A. I am sorry, I think this is too general when you say
22 "daily shelling", but on one of those days before
23 6th or 7th May, I was told that two shells had fallen on
24 Konjic, one down town and one near the railway station.
25 During my sojourn in the town, and I stayed there for
Page 6029
1 several hours, there was no shelling.
2 Q. Can you tell us where those shells came from that hit
3 the town?
4 A. What do you mean?
5 Q. From which positions?
6 A. I was not aware of any positions around Konjic, nor did
7 I know where the shells were coming from.
8 Q. If I were to tell you that there were positions in the
9 direction of the lake of Borci, what would be your
10 answer?
11 A. Possibly.
12 Q. Later on, as you have testified in court, you were also
13 in Konjic, and you must have witnessed the shelling of
14 the town throughout 1992, and that it suffered terribly
15 from the consequences of that shelling?
16 A. That is true.
17 Q. Therefore, May 6th to 7th, you probably were aware of a
18 heavy artillery and air and missile attack on the city?
19 A. No. On 6th or 7th May I returned to Bradina by bus.
20 This must have been around noon, and on that day there
21 was no attack, up to the time I left. What happened
22 later I do not know.
23 Q. You told the court that you knew that the inhabitants of
24 Bradina, the Serbs, had organised themselves, and they
25 had some kind of guard duty and some checkpoints. Since
Page 6030
1 you were up there in Bradina, can you tell us whether
2 such checkpoints existed along the highway which you
3 know is the only asphalt road between Konjic and
4 Sarajevo?
5 A. Yes, there was one checkpoint held by the Muslims and
6 the Croats south of the tunnel at the entrance to
7 Bradina, and the other one was on the north side of the
8 tunnel in the direction of Bradina which was held by
9 Serbs.
10 Q. Since you told me a moment ago that you were familiar
11 with the setup of the authorities in the municipality,
12 you must have known that in the military structure in
13 the former SFRY, there was the Territorial Defence?
14 A. Of course I know Territorial Defence is one of the
15 elements not of national Defence but in addition to the
16 JNA, it was part of the armed forces of Yugoslavia.
17 There was the Yugoslav People's Army and the Territorial
18 Defence as a second element.
19 Q. You probably know, Mr. Grubac, that earlier the SUP, the
20 Secretariat of the Interior, which would mean the police
21 forces in the broadest sense, later changed its name to
22 MUP, which is to say the Ministry of the Interior, which
23 as an institution performed the duties of police and
24 internal security?
25 A. Yes.
Page 6031
1 Q. And you probably are acquainted, Mr. Grubac, with the
2 fact that after Bosnia-Herzegovina was proclaimed an
3 independent state, the Territorial Defence was
4 proclaimed a legitimate defensive force of that state,
5 and that the Ministry of Internal Affairs continued to
6 discharge its statutorily described functions?
7 A. No, that is not so. This is oversimplified.
8 Q. Okay, then we will ask someone who is more versed in
9 those things than you or myself?
10 A. You ask me whether I know that that was so and I am just
11 replying, no, I am not aware of the fact that it was so,
12 which does not mean that I am an expert on the subject,
13 but I believed that it is different and that Territorial
14 Defence could not be proclaimed an armed force of a
15 state because it is already part of the composition of
16 the armed forces of the state in that particular state
17 of Yugoslavia.
18 Q. Let us skip over these political subjects which are of
19 less interest to us. I should like to ask you to
20 confirm some facts for me, and you have stated your
21 opinion vis-a-vis this particular question, thank you.
22 I should only like to ask you if it is true that
23 in the city of Konjic, there remained certain structures
24 or certain bodies of authority which had existed also
25 before, and continued to discharge their functions also
Page 6032
1 at that time; which is to say the MUP, the assembly, the
2 war presidency, so these structures existed at the time
3 you left Konjic, did they not, when you left for
4 Bradina; is that a fact?
5 A. Theoretically, they existed, but probably without there
6 being members of all the nations in them. I believe at
7 that time already representatives of the Serb nation had
8 already left these bodies.
9 Q. These authorities in Konjic as -- as regards these
10 authorities in Konjic, do you know of their having
11 issued an order to Serbian guards to dismantle the
12 checkpoints which they had erected in the city?
13 A. Will you please be so kind as to repeat the question?
14 Q. Do you know that the authorities in Konjic asked the
15 Serbs in Bradina to dismantle the checkpoints and free
16 the road and asked the men to surrender the weapons
17 which they had?
18 A. I cannot answer in the affirmative that particular
19 question. I can say however that a group of people from
20 Bradina did go to have some negotiations with the
21 Muslims and the Croats in Podorasac.
22 Q. Dr. Grubac, you know Rajko Djordjic?
23 A. Yes, I do.
24 Q. He worked in the headquarters of the Territorial Defence
25 of Konjic, did he not?
Page 6033
1 A. Yes, he did.
2 Q. He was not expelled from the headquarters, he left it of
3 his own volition and came to the city, is that not so?
4 A. I cannot confirm that. He was in Bradina.
5 Q. He was in charge of organising a defence and assisting
6 the people in procuring arms?
7 A. As for the second part, I do not know about the
8 procuring of arms, I really do not know how one could go
9 about providing arms in Bradina at the time.
10 Q. But you do know that he was in charge of organising the
11 Defence of Bradina?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. However, as you have already replied to the Prosecutor's
14 question, you did not want to get involved in such
15 activities yourself.
16 A. Let me just supplement this. Defence is a broad term.
17 I believe there were some village guard duties which
18 were there to protect my people, the elderly, the women,
19 the children from some attackers. That was not Defence
20 in the military sense.
21 MR. ACKERMAN: Excuse me just a moment. I am not sure, your
22 Honour, the witness understood that he should listen for
23 the English translation coming out of the other set of
24 earphones to end before he answers his question. I am
25 not even sure the other set of earphones is set on the
Page 6034
1 English. We are getting into that problem of everything
2 running together again.
3 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: There is perhaps an inconsistency
4 between the question and answer. Perhaps that might
5 help us to correct it. But I see some correlation
6 between the question and the answer.
7 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, your Honour.
8 MS. RESIDOVIC: Mr. Grubac, we have been warned. Our
9 colleagues would like us to slow down a bit. You were
10 not entrusted with -- you were not given any sort of
11 weapon, were you?
12 A. No.
13 Q. However, you knew that the majority of the population of
14 Bradina did have weapons?
15 A. That the majority of the population had weapons? No,
16 that is not true. Only some of the people in Bradina
17 had some armaments.
18 Q. Mr. Grubac, can you confirm that by May 25th, the day you
19 say that Bradina came under an attack, the checkpoints
20 held by those guards in Bradina had not been dismantled?
21 A. I do not know whether they were or not. These
22 checkpoints are quite a distance from the centre of the
23 town and I did not go there so I cannot confirm what you
24 have just stated.
25 Q. But you probably know since you did go down town to work
Page 6035
1 at the infirmary, to the centre of Bradina, that the
2 road was not -- the blockade of the road had not been
3 lifted by that time?
4 A. I do not know whether it had been deblocked because
5 before that somebody had blocked the tunnel on the side
6 towards Konjic.
7 Q. Is it true that some people in Konjic associated you and
8 your activities in Bradina with the family of your wife
9 and some persons who also bore your surname, although
10 they were no relatives of yours?
11 A. Can you please repeat this question?
12 Q. Is Rajko Djordjic related to your wife?
13 A. Yes, Rajko Djordjic is a relative of my wife's.
14 Q. In the Republika Serbska in the Hercegovina there is a
15 general Grubac who is no relative of yours. Do you know
16 him?
17 A. Yes, that is so.
18 Q. In view of these two facts, do you think or have you
19 been told that some people associated your position in
20 Bradina with the fact that your wife is related to Rajko
21 Djordjic who organised the Defence of Bradina and also
22 with the fact that in positions held by the JNA army or
23 the Republika Serbska army at that time is General
24 Grubac. Did anyone inform you of this fact or do you
25 believe your position had been associated with these
Page 6036
1 facts?
2 A. That is possible, but I was not told that by anyone
3 else.
4 Q. As you have told me, as a physician and the manager of
5 the health centre, you knew the community, the commune
6 of Konjic and Bradina is certainly part of the
7 municipality of Konjic, is that not so?
8 A. Yes, it is.
9 Q. Can you then tell us why the authorities of Konjic
10 should occupy by armed force the territory of its own
11 municipality?
12 A. I do not see how I could explain that to you. I believe
13 that that is exactly where the problem is.
14 Q. Did there exist a normal passage through Bradina?
15 A. The tunnel on one side of Bradina had been blown up,
16 mined, so one could not pass.
17 Q. Except by a detour?
18 A. Yes, by a detour, but I am not sure of it, I do not
19 know.
20 Q. Please, Dr. Grubac, you can confirm the fact that there
21 was a mixed ethnic composition in Konjic with the
22 majority being Muslims, can you?
23 A. Yes, of the 45,000 inhabitants of the municipality of
24 Konjic, Muslims accounted for 52 per cent.
25 Q. But the regions, the areas and the villages surrounding
Page 6037
1 Konjic had a majority Serbian population for the most
2 part, Donje Selo, Bjelovcina, Brdjani, Bradina,
3 Bjelasnica, Borci?
4 A. Yes, Celebici too.
5 Q. Yes, Celebici too. If these areas I have just
6 enumerated were to be separated from the commune of
7 Konjic, then the centre of the city of Konjic will be
8 completely cut off from the other parts of the republic
9 of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Is that not so?
10 A. I do not know to whom it would occur to separate these
11 Serbian villages from the municipality of Konjic because
12 as you are yourself perfectly aware, these are villages
13 which are part of the municipality of Konjic.
14 Q. But I am asking you if it did occur to you, probably not
15 to you or to me, or if it did occur to someone, if
16 someone had that wish or intention to separate this
17 territory of the villages surrounding Konjic from the
18 municipality of Konjic, would it not be true in that
19 true that the centre of the city of Konjic would be
20 completely cut off from the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina?
21 A. Theoretically that is true, but these villages cannot be
22 separated from Konjic because around them we have
23 another ring of Muslim and Croat villages surrounding
24 these villages, but theoretically that is correct.
25 Possible.
Page 6038
1 Q. Theoretically, if that theory were translated into
2 practice and someone were to take such a decision, from
3 the stand point of the legal authorities, such an act on
4 the part of the population would be a rebellion and an
5 anticonstitutional act?
6 A. Of course.
7 Q. Do you know that on 22nd March the SDS adopted a
8 decision to establish the Serbian commune of Konjic
9 which reflected precisely what we have just now agreed
10 from the standpoint of legitimate authorities as being
11 impossible, which commune incorporated all these regions
12 that we have enumerated. The decision was made on
13 22nd March 1992 and later endorsed by a decision of the
14 SDS in the commune of Konjic about their
15 non-participation in the Defence of Konjic?
16 A. I do not see through what means or media I could have
17 found out that anyone had adopted such a decision, and
18 I do not know of such a decision. I have not heard of
19 one.
20 Q. Are you aware of the fact that the political leadership
21 in Bradina was fully under the influence of the SDS
22 party to which you did not belong yourself?
23 A. I could not confirm that for a fact.
24 Q. Is it true that some 600 to 700 inhabitants lived in
25 Bradina before the war?
Page 6039
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Is it true that at the time when you came to Bradina,
3 there were over 1,500 inhabitants there?
4 A. I am not sure that there were 1,500 of them, but there
5 were many more than the usual number of inhabitants.
6 Q. Can you tell me the number of militarily able-bodied
7 men? What was their number?
8 A. I did not engage in any such statistics. I really could
9 not tell you.
10 Q. Then you certainly do not know what the number of
11 children or women was?
12 A. No, I do not know. I do not know the numbers.
13 Q. Do you know how many armed persons there were?
14 A. No, I do not know. I was in no structure that dealt
15 with these things, no body which dealt with these
16 things.
17 Q. Do you know how many men from Bradina had been arrested
18 and taken to Celebici?
19 A. I do not know what time you are referring to.
20 Q. During those battles, attacks.
21 A. I think that all the male population, irrespective of
22 age, was apprehended and taken to either Celebici or the
23 sports hall in Musala or the 3rd March primary school or
24 perhaps some other facility.
25 Q. You cannot say what the number was?
Page 6040
1 A. All of them at the time.
2 Q. Okay, let us return to your personal position. After
3 your arrival in Bradina, in consultation with Dr. Ahmed
4 Jusufbegovic you continued to work in the health centre?
5 A. No. There was no agreement with Dr. Ahmed Jusufbegovic
6 for me to continue to work.
7 Q. Did Dr. Relja have such approval?
8 A. I do not know.
9 Q. So it was of your own initiative that together with
10 Dr. Relja and Dr. Zuza that you continued working in the
11 infirmary in Bradina?
12 A. On 6th or 7th May I could no longer return because the
13 Muslim held checkpoint under Bradina, southwards towards
14 Konjic. They would not let the buses pass so I could
15 not go any further. They had also abolished the bus
16 line on which I used to go from Bradina to Konjic.
17 Q. Mr. Grubac, that is an answer to the question why you did
18 not return to Konjic. I am asking you something else;
19 did you, together with Dr. Relja Mrkajic and Dr. Zuza,
20 continue to work in the infirmary in Bradina?
21 A. I did not continue. I started to work in that facility.
22 Q. Thank you for your precision. Let me just ask you a few
23 questions regarding this infirmary which I do know in a
24 way, but it is better for you to tell the court. This
25 is a small branch infirmary which has two separated but
Page 6041
1 linked rooms. You and Dr. Relja worked in one of those
2 and Dr. Zuza in the other room; is that so?
3 A. That is so.
4 Q. Your room was the general practice infirmary and
5 Dr. Zuza's was the dentist's surgery; is that a fact?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. On the day of the attack on Bradina in this infirmary,
8 were you yourself and Dr. Relja and Dr. Zuza, is that not
9 so?
10 A. And some of the medical staff, the technicians.
11 Q. Yes. During the day already an injured villager, a
12 local, came to the infirmary and you extended aid to
13 him; is that so?
14 A. Yes, that is so.
15 Q. You were informed after that there were people injured
16 on both sides so you went there and together you also
17 treated the other patients, extended aid to the other
18 patients, Suljina Strana?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. You and Dr. Relja, although it was offered to you, never
21 wanted to accept weapons, is that so?
22 A. No, that is not so. No one ever offered me any
23 weapons. As a matter of fact, I do not know how to use
24 any weapons.
25 Q. But you do know that Dr. Relja had no weapons, you know
Page 6042
1 that for a fact?
2 A. Yes, Dr. Relja had no weapons.
3 Q. But you know that Dr. Zuza had a semi-automatic rifle?
4 A. No, I do not know that Dr. Zuza had a semi-automatic
5 rifle. How should I know that?
6 Q. You know that that semi-automatic rifle was kept in the
7 dentistry, in the dentist's surgery in the infirmary?
8 A. No, as far as I know in the dentist's surgery there were
9 no weapons or any rifles, unless it was concealed.
10 Q. You have probably heard that Dr. Zuza after he had been
11 arrested, surrendered his semi-automatic rifle from the
12 dental surgery?
13 A. This is the first time I hear of you, from you.
14 Q. If Dr. Relja Mrkajic were to testify before this court to
15 these facts about which I have just asked you, would you
16 consider them not to be true?
17 A. No, I would not say that at all, I was not there when
18 they were arrested.
19 Q. Yes, but if the doctor confirms that he had that rifle
20 in the dental surgery, you say that is not true?
21 A. No, what I am saying is that when I came into the dental
22 surgery, which was not all that often, there was no
23 rifle in sight. There might have been one hidden.
24 Q. During that day, the first day of the attack on Bradina,
25 as well as later, you did not see anyone that you could
Page 6043
1 recognise among those who were attacking Bradina; is
2 that so?
3 A. On the 25th in the evening I went to the house of my
4 in-laws, my wife's parents, and I did not return down
5 there any more so I could not see any of the attacks on
6 Bradina because that is quite on the opposite side from
7 the place where I was and the place where that was
8 happening.
9 Q. So not on the 26th nor on 27th May were you on the scene
10 to be able to testify to that?
11 A. No, I was not there.
12 Q. So you cannot say anything, you were not present. You
13 did not see people being captured or what happened to
14 the women and children during those two days, is that
15 so?
16 A. Yes, that is so.
17 Q. And as you have testified, on 27th May you went down to
18 this creek to the woods with another 35 persons and
19 there you hid for a day or two; is that so?
20 A. No, I would not say two days. We were there for one day
21 and then we decided next morning to go down to the road
22 and to report ourselves in.
23 Q. So if you told the investigator, the prosecutors, that
24 it was two days, it might have been a slip of the
25 tongue?
Page 6044
1 A. From 25th to 28th in the morning I was in the area. One
2 of those nights we spent in the creek and we slept there
3 because the soldiers were already shooting around the
4 place, setting houses on fire. That might have been
5 27th, the night of 27th. On 28th in the morning we
6 reported it down there and we spent one night there.
7 Q. Just one question in this connection. You know that
8 Bradina, in view of the configuration of the terrain,
9 has many remote isolated houses scattered on the nearby
10 hills?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. You can agree with me that after these events it was
13 quite risky to stay in these houses, for a family to
14 stay in so lonely a place, it was quite risky, was it
15 not?
16 A. Yes, it was.
17 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: I think we have done enough for this
18 period. We will break and come back at 4.30 for you to
19 continue.
20 (4.00 pm)
21 (A short break)
22 (4.30 pm)
23 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
24 You may proceed, Ms. Residovic.
25 MS. RESIDOVIC: Mr. Grubac, on 28th May you surrendered to
Page 6045
1 the forces of the TO, HVO and MUP who were in Bradina
2 and who already controlled the whole territory of
3 Bradina by that time?
4 A. I would prefer to say that this was the Muslim and Croat
5 army. I do not know what TO or anything else they
6 belong to.
7 Q. Actually, you surrendered to a member of the MUP called
8 Nurko Habibija who, as you know, before the war was a
9 traffic policeman?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. He is a Muslim, if you prefer us to talk about the
12 ethnic background of those people, and then a Croat
13 called Zilic, also a member of the MUP, drove you to the
14 police station in Konjic, is that so?
15 A. Who before was not a member of the MUP, if you said of
16 Nurko that he was a member of the MUP before the war,
17 this one was not. Yes, the answer is yes.
18 Q. Did Habibija or Zilic say anything to you on this
19 occasion?
20 A. Habibija said nothing and Zilic drove four of us men to
21 Konjic. I do not recall he said anything in particular
22 that I would remember.
23 Q. And there in the police station in Konjic you were taken
24 to a small cell in the police building, as you have
25 already testified in court.
Page 6046
1 A. That is so, correct.
2 Q. Again from your former experience and your knowledge of
3 Konjic, you knew that the police building in Konjic did
4 not have a proper detention unit and that before the war
5 when there were more prisoners, they were taken to the
6 prison in Mostar?
7 A. Actually, I did know that Konjic did not have a prison.
8 Q. You indicated the size of this cell and you found 10 to
9 12 Serbs from the village of Celebici and its environs?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And as you have already testified, you learnt that they
12 had been there for some three weeks which means that
13 they were arrested some time between 5th and 10th May.
14 A. Yes, that is what they told me.
15 Q. You recognised Simo Jovanovic who had already been
16 injured?
17 A. I did not say that, I did not notice any visible
18 injuries.
19 Q. But you did recognise him?
20 A. Yes, I recognised him and some other people who were in
21 the cell.
22 Q. And after that, MUP members again took you to the
23 barracks in Celebici?
24 A. To the Celebici camp.
25 Q. Actually, Sefko Niksic, deputy chief of MUP, ordered
Page 6047
1 that you be transferred there.
2 A. I do not know who gave the orders for our transfer.
3 Q. Did Sefko Niksic talk to you at all on that day?
4 A. He was in the corridor with Jasmin Guska and with some
5 other policemen. He said something nasty at my expense.
6 Q. When you spoke about the conversation you had in the
7 command building, and when you were told that you would
8 be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, is
9 it also true that you were told that you would be tried
10 because you were with the Chetniks in Bradina?
11 A. Yes, Dr. Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic told me I would be
12 treated according to the Geneva Convention and that
13 I would be tried for what I had done. I cannot recall
14 that he said precisely what you said, that it was
15 because I was with the Chetniks in Bradina.
16 Q. If this is to be found in the statement that you made
17 for the Prosecution representative, then what you said
18 then was not correct.
19 A. Maybe I do not remember with precision the words used.
20 It is quite possible that that is what he said, but he
21 may also have said, "you will be tried for what you
22 did", so I cannot precisely confirm whether those were
23 the words he used.
24 Q. The 3rd March school that you were transferred to the
25 next day was adapted into some kind of an infirmary, was
Page 6048
1 it not?
2 A. It might be said so, though it was not really any kind
3 of an infirmary.
4 Q. And the health centre you used to work in before is not
5 far from that school, is it?
6 A. It is not far.
7 Q. And you probably know that in the health centre all the
8 citizens who were injured from the shelling were
9 treated, as well as fighters of the TO, HVO and MUP who
10 were injured during the combat operations.
11 A. The health centre is the only medical institution in the
12 territory of the Konjic municipality, apart from the
13 outlying infirmaries and probably whatever could be
14 treated at that level was treated in the medical centre,
15 all those injuries that did not require a more
16 complicated diagnostical procedure or more complicated
17 therapy.
18 Q. Yes, but the persons who were in the 3rd March school
19 were actually Serbs who were thought to have
20 participated in the operations in Bradina and for those
21 reasons, they were not treated in the health centre; is
22 that not so?
23 A. No, that is not so at all: it is not true at all,
24 otherwise the conditions would have been quite different
25 for people to be treated. There were absolutely no
Page 6049
1 conditions for treating anyone, not even those injured
2 from Bradina.
3 Q. Dr. Grubac, let me ask you something else linked to your
4 activities before the war. You remember that in Konjic,
5 prior to the war, there were problems with medical
6 supplies in the Konjic health centre, were there not?
7 A. I cannot recall that there were any particular problems
8 regarding medical supplies in the health centre.
9 Q. But do you remember when the war began that the problem
10 with medicines became acute in the health centre?
11 A. I did not communicate with anyone in the health centre,
12 so I cannot confirm or deny what you are asking.
13 Q. While you were in the infirmary at the 3rd March school,
14 you listed what you felt you needed for treatment and
15 you sent this to the hospital pharmacy.
16 A. Perhaps a couple of times at the beginning I did make a
17 list of supplies that we needed, medicines and sterile
18 bandages and things, syringes, antibiotics and other
19 medicines, and I gave this to Hazim Delic. However, we
20 would get only an insignificant amount consisting of
21 some pain killers, some bandages.
22 Q. Maybe we have not understood one another. I am talking
23 about the period of seven or eight days when you were in
24 the 3rd March school, when, in answer to your request,
25 you did receive a certain amount of medicines and other
Page 6050
1 medical supplies.
2 A. Yes, that is true.
3 Q. While you were there you were guarded together with the
4 injured by members of the HVO police in the school.
5 A. We were guarded by some policemen and some military
6 men. I do not know who they belonged to. It is
7 possible that they were as you said.
8 Q. And while you were there, you were able to hear strong
9 artillery operations in town, resulting in the first
10 civilian casualties, and some children were killed in
11 town.
12 A. I did not know that and anyway, I do not know how
13 I could have known what was happening in town when we
14 were isolated and locked up. We could not go out,
15 unless opened, unlocked the door.
16 Q. I have been listening to this for four years. If I do
17 not see anything but I can hear the shell when it hits,
18 but you are speaking under oath and you must tell us
19 what you think is the truth.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. The persons that you treated in the 3rd March school, to
22 the best of your abilities, were inflicted these
23 injuries during their arrest, transport and detention in
24 the Celebici camp?
25 A. And perhaps in the camp itself.
Page 6051
1 Q. I am sorry?
2 A. Or probably in some other places. I cannot list all the
3 locations where they may have been injured.
4 Q. But if I find the statement that you made to a
5 representative of the Prosecution in December, then your
6 statement then was not quite correct.
7 A. Maybe it was not quite precise enough. I may not have
8 mentioned that there may have been some other locations
9 like the Celebici camp, or some other places. There
10 were probably some other places in addition to those
11 listed, where these people may have been injured,
12 I could not tell, just as I cannot tell now. I could
13 not tell then and I cannot tell now.
14 Q. In the 3rd March school, you and the patients were not
15 subjected to any kind of mistreatment or abuse.
16 A. No, that is not correct.
17 Q. As you have already testified, seven or eight days later
18 you were transferred to Celebici, and immediately after
19 your arrival you were interrogated by a commission which
20 was conducting an investigation in connection with the
21 Serb detainees in Celebici.
22 A. I would not call it a commission. I was interrogated by
23 a particular individual known as Mladen Zovko, nicknamed
24 Kuhar. I do not know what commission he belonged to.
25 Q. Did you know that other persons were interrogated too?
Page 6052
1 A. Yes, I did.
2 Q. Did you know that they were interrogated by other
3 persons and not by Mladen Zovko?
4 A. Yes, I did.
5 Q. Can you tell us the names of some other people who
6 interrogated detainees in Celebici?
7 A. Stenek, I cannot recall his first name, he was a teacher
8 or a worker in MUP. Miro Stenek was his name, and some
9 other people whose names I cannot recall.
10 Q. They were mostly MUP personnel or inspectors of the MUP?
11 A. I think they were people who had nothing to do with MUP
12 who took statements, or maybe they did work for MUP.
13 I am not quite sure about that.
14 Q. Did you know that Goran Lokas was in charge of the
15 inspectors who were conducting the interrogations?
16 A. Through some connections while I was still in the
17 3rd March school in Konjic. I learned that Goran Lokas,
18 who used to be a head of department in MUP and for a
19 time he was a judge because he is a lawyer by training,
20 that he was President of the commission or whatever the
21 function was called. Actually, he was in charge of some
22 kind of a group that carried out some sort of
23 investigations.
24 Q. You and your wife thought that Goran Lokas might help
25 you because he had the authority, after examining the
Page 6053
1 situation, to release individuals; is that so?
2 A. I do not know whether we thought that he could release
3 us, but we looked for ways through some connections to
4 reach Goran Lokas, thinking that probably he might be
5 able to help us and we knew him from before, but because
6 of the position he held, that he might be able to help
7 us.
8 Q. But you did not succeed because Goran Lokas had a
9 traffic accident, did he not?
10 A. Yes, he did.
11 Q. And you know that at the time the commission was joined
12 by Jerko Kostic, also a worker in the MUP from the
13 prewar period.
14 A. I hear this name of Jerko Kostic from you for the first
15 time.
16 Q. Very well, Mr. Grubac. You have already testified that
17 you were interrogated briefly, which questions were put
18 to you, and that you were treated correctly while making
19 that statement; is that not so?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And that they entered into that statement what you
22 actually said?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Would you please look at that statement, dated 8th June
25 1992, to see whether you can recognise your signature on
Page 6054
1 it. With the assistance of the usher I would like to
2 show this statement to the witness, and since we
3 received the statement from the Prosecution, I have
4 copies here for the Trial Chamber and for the Registry.
5 This copy is for the witness. (Handed).
6 THE REGISTRAR: The document will be marked D59/1.
7 MS. RESIDOVIC: Dr. Grubac, will you please look at the
8 signature on the second page. Is that your signature?
9 A. Yes, it is.
10 Q. I should like to ask you to look at the right-hand
11 corner of the first page. There is "4K" written. Can
12 you tell me whether you know that prisoners were
13 classified into several categories in our language?
14 A. I heard that prisoners were categorised, but I do not
15 know what the system was nor how many categories there
16 were.
17 Q. If it says "4K" on the top of the page, does that mean
18 that you belong to the fourth category?
19 A. Probably.
20 Q. Does that mean that the person who interrogated you, or
21 who it was that analysed whatever you said, established
22 that you belonged to the fourth category?
23 A. How could I know that? It probably does mean that.
24 Q. Thank you. In view of the fact that the witness
25 confirmed the content of the statement, and also
Page 6055
1 recognised his signature on the statement, that this
2 statement be admitted as evidence of the Defence, D/51.
3 MR. TURONE: No objection, your Honour.
4 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: It is admitted.
5 MS. RESIDOVIC: Thank you. Mr. Grubac, you said that about
6 mid June an injured Pero Mrkajic was brought to the
7 infirmary, and that he died in the infirmary.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Do you know, Dr. Grubac, that a group of inhabitants of
10 Bradina tried to cross into Serb held territory in the
11 direction of Kalinovik and that they were later arrested
12 and brought into custody?
13 A. Yes, I do know.
14 Q. Did you know that this group of prisoners was mistreated
15 and beaten fiercely while being arrested?
16 A. Yes, some members of that group told me as much.
17 Q. Are you also aware that Pero Mrkajic was among one of
18 those subsequently brought in groups?
19 A. Yes, I do know that.
20 Q. Thank you. Dr. Grubac, we can now pass on to another
21 subject that you have testified to before this Trial
22 Chamber. Actually, in answer to my question you said
23 that for a time you performed the duties of director of
24 the health centre in Konjic. While you held that post,
25 did you have the authority to pass on some of your
Page 6056
1 competencies to someone else when you were unable to
2 perform your duties?
3 A. Yes, I am aware of that possibility.
4 Q. You also said that six or seven days prior to your
5 release from Celebici, your wife came to visit, your
6 wife Gordana?
7 A. Yes, that is true.
8 Q. If your wife Gordana said in a statement to a
9 representative of the International Tribunal that she
10 visited you the day before your release, then she was
11 not telling the truth.
12 A. She probably remembers better than I do. It may have
13 been one day -- I do not understand, what did I say, ten
14 days?
15 Q. No, you said seven or eight days.
16 A. Her statement is probably more correct than mine.
17 Q. And your wife was living in Konjic with her parents
18 throughout the time you spent in Celebici?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Is it true that when you met with your wife, you asked
21 her to go and see your best man from your wedding,
22 Dr. Ahmed Jusufbegovic, and to ask him if he could to
23 bring about your release?
24 A. That is true.
25 Q. Actually, after she left you did not know whether she
Page 6057
1 had contacted Dr. Jusufbegovic or whether she had tried
2 to help you in some other way?
3 A. I could not know, nor did I know whether she had
4 contacted Dr. Jusufbegovic.
5 Q. But you were informed the next day that you and Dr. Relja
6 would be released.
7 A. I thought it was several days later, but probably it was
8 the next day.
9 Q. And that same evening, about 9.00 pm, a guard known as
10 Focak came and said jokingly that you had reason to
11 treat people and he gave you the release papers; is that
12 correct?
13 A. Yes, it is.
14 Q. The paper that you were given was addressed to you and
15 it was signed, was it not?
16 A. I think that was so.
17 Q. After that, you were taken to Mr. Delalic's house?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Actually, the release paper contained everything that we
20 have already seen and no corrections were made on that
21 document in your presence.
22 A. I cannot recall such details, whether anything was added
23 to that document or not. I cannot claim that the
24 content of that paper was the same when we received it
25 in Celebici or whether Zejnil or somebody else added
Page 6058
1 anything to it in his house.
2 Q. So if this morning during the examination-in-chief you
3 said that a correction may have been made on the papers
4 of Dr. Relja, then you were not saying the precise
5 truth.
6 A. I think that I said that I was not sure what was added
7 to those papers. It is possible that something may have
8 been added on Relja's because he asked another location
9 to be indicated, but I did not exclude the possibility
10 of anything being added on my paper. It is something
11 I simply cannot remember. I cannot claim that anything
12 was added or that was not added. I cannot be quite
13 definite about this.
14 Q. Thank you. During that brief visit to Mr. Delalic's
15 home, you were able to see that Mr. Delalic was surprised
16 that you were a prisoner in Celebici?
17 A. Could you please repeat that question?
18 Q. Talking to Mr. Delalic were you able to notice his
19 surprise that you were a prisoner in the Celebici
20 prison?
21 A. That was not my impression.
22 Q. If a third party would say that, then that is their
23 impression, is it not?
24 A. Yes, indeed. I really could not gain such an
25 impression.
Page 6059
1 Q. I would ask the usher's assistance to show you an
2 exhibit of the Prosecution, I think it is number 69,
3 your release paper, if we can look at it.
4 THE REGISTRAR: Exhibit 169.
5 MS. RESIDOVIC: Dr. Grubac, in the lower right-hand corner
6 is it true that you see the word "head of the
7 investigating body".
8 A. That cannot be seen clearly on my copy, but I think --
9 can I look at this copy? Yes, that is what it says.
10 Q. Is it true that after that heading, you see the small
11 word "for" in handwriting?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Mr. Grubac, in addition to having heard that Goran Lokas
14 was President or head of that body while you were in the
15 3rd March school, did you know who headed the
16 investigating body?
17 A. I did not know at all that such a position existed.
18 I did not even know that there was an investigating
19 body, because nobody did any investigations apart from
20 these statements, and I did not even know that Goran
21 Lokas was in charge of that investigating body.
22 Q. Very well, Dr. Grubac, but if you see that above the
23 title you see the word "for", this would mean that the
24 person signing the document was not the person heading
25 the investigating body.
Page 6060
1 A. Yes, that is what that means, of course.
2 Q. But let us try and simplify matters a little. Since you
3 were the director and you already told me that you could
4 authorise somebody orally or in writing to do something
5 on your behalf, is that not so?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. If one of the doctors or employees received such
8 authority, then also before signing a paper of any kind
9 they would have to add the small word "for" or "on
10 behalf of" the manager. That would be the procedure for
11 signing the document on your behalf.
12 A. Yes, that is correct.
13 Q. Then you will agree with me, generally speaking, that if
14 there is such a word "for" attached to a signature it
15 indicates that the person signing the document is doing
16 so upon the authority of somebody else or on behalf of
17 somebody else; is that not so?
18 A. Yes, that is correct.
19 Q. Dr. Grubac, let me ask you this: did you know that at the
20 time when you were released, in the area towards Boracko
21 Lake there was combat, there was an offensive on?
22 A. No, I do not know of any such activities, of any
23 offensive against Celebici when I was released.
24 Q. Not Celebici, the Boracko Lake?
25 A. No, not on Boracko Lake and I do not see how you could
Page 6061
1 think I would know of such an offensive.
2 Q. Let me refresh your memory Mr. Grubac a bit. That
3 evening when you came to Mr. Delalic's, you found out
4 that he had just come from the combat positions from
5 Vranske Stijene that he had to return soon after, that
6 he had just come from combat. Did he tell you that?
7 A. I do not remember at all of his having told me that he
8 had taken part in any combat. I, in fact, thought that
9 he did not take part in combat.
10 Q. If Dr. Relja Mrkajic says that Zejnil Delalic had
11 precisely come on that day from some combat position,
12 then you feel he is not saying the truth?
13 A. I have no reason not to tell the truth. I just want to
14 tell you that I do not remember Zejnil telling us that
15 he had come from any combat positions. This is the
16 first time I hear of such a formulation. It is possible
17 that Relja in some contact with him, while I was perhaps
18 doing something else, heard that particular piece of
19 information. I am not saying that it is not true, but
20 I cannot confirm it because I really do not remember.
21 Q. Dr. Grubac, when you were recognising this model during
22 the examination-in-chief as the model of the Celebici
23 barracks, you pointed to the buildings which were used
24 as a prison at the camp, is that so?
25 A. That is right.
Page 6062
1 Q. However, you probably know that this entire compound has
2 some 10,000 square metres of overall area.
3 A. Yes, that is so.
4 Q. And that practically only a small part of this entire
5 space was used as a camp?
6 A. Yes, that is correct.
7 Q. And you certainly know that a large part of the building
8 was used to house equipment, armaments, food for the
9 area of the entire Bosnia and other material and
10 supplies?
11 A. This is the first time I hear of it from you. I had no
12 idea for what purposes it was being used and what was
13 the use of the rest of the facility.
14 Q. Did you know that in this facility there were large
15 warehouses of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina?
16 A. I did not know that either. These were probably some
17 secrets and I do not see why you think, and how you
18 think that I could have known what was in the military
19 warehouses there.
20 Q. And any vehicle which entered the compound of the
21 barracks of Celebici had to pass through this first gate
22 which you have indicated to us, is that so?
23 A. I do not know whether that is so. Perhaps in addition
24 to that road leading to the railway and that entrance
25 there was some other entrance perhaps also. I do not
Page 6063
1 know of one and I had no way of knowing if there had
2 been one.
3 Q. But during your sojourn there, did you see numerous
4 trucks and other vehicles passing on that road through
5 the gate in front of number 9 to the farther areas of
6 the barracks, of the compound?
7 A. I never saw such trucks. I did hear from some
8 prisoners, they said that some trucks had come, that
9 they had unloaded some armaments, ammunitions and so on,
10 but I personally never saw them.
11 Q. So if you heard from the prisoners that armaments and
12 other supplies had been unloaded, then you probably can
13 confirm that that meant that the Celebici barracks, not
14 the camp, that many people connected by business ties
15 and associated with the camp compound because of the
16 other activities within the compound had to come to the
17 camp, you can agree on that score with me, can you not?
18 A. Yes, that is a different assumption, because first you
19 advance this first assumption from which you derive this
20 second assumption. Theoretically I could agree with
21 you, but I cannot confirm that. There are too many
22 assumptions in your question.
23 Q. Dr. Grubac, I would really like you to answer to the best
24 of your knowledge and for me not to have a single
25 assumption in my questions, but I asked my question on
Page 6064
1 the basis of your answer, that you were told by
2 prisoners that they had unloaded ammunition and
3 armaments and other supplies there and I thought that
4 that was a fact which was known to you, and my question
5 was based on that.
6 A. Can I tell you that here in court, the stories are not
7 taken for facts because in that case I could adduce as
8 many facts as I could think of, but these are stories,
9 accounts of other people which are not accepted by the
10 court as facts and that is why I answered in the way in
11 which I did.
12 Q. Mr. Grubac, you said that you knew personally the family
13 of Zejnil Delalic, is that so?
14 A. Some members of his family, yes.
15 Q. You know his brothers and some relatives of his, do you
16 not?
17 A. Yes, I do.
18 Q. You are, if I can put it that way, the family doctor of
19 this family; you treated his mother and his brother, is
20 that so?
21 A. It is.
22 Q. And you can certainly testify before this Tribunal that
23 some members of this family are very similar to each
24 other, Zejnil, Zajka and the late Sefik who you also
25 treated for instance, is that true?
Page 6065
1 A. Yes, they resemble each other very much.
2 Q. And people who, like you yourself, do not know them
3 well, could probably substitute one of them for the
4 other, could they not?
5 A. I would not myself substitute one of them for the other,
6 but I do believe that some people could do that, yes.
7 Q. You used to meet the late Sefik in the Celebici barracks
8 also and on a couple of occasions he also assisted you
9 financially, did he not?
10 A. Yes, he did.
11 Q. Mr. Grubac, you also know Jasna Dzumhur who was the
12 chairwoman of the exchange commission?
13 A. Yes, I do, I know her. I also knew her before the war.
14 Q. And you know that in discharging her duties, Jasna also
15 used a Jeep?
16 A. I do not know that, I hear of it for the first time.
17 Q. But do you know that at that time, Mr. Delalic had two
18 jeeps, a white one and a green one?
19 A. I think he had a number of Jeeps.
20 Q. And that in view of the war circumstances and everything
21 that was going on there, his brothers Dzemal and his
22 relatives and his drivers often drove those jeeps?
23 A. I know for a fact that his late brother Sefik drove one
24 of those Jeeps, the second Jeep.
25 Q. In view of the location of the building number 22, which
Page 6066
1 is to say right across the administrative building, as
2 you said, you could sometimes see vehicles being parked
3 in front of that administrative building?
4 A. Yes, that is so.
5 Q. And you probably know that people who came on various
6 businesses to Celebici also dropped in at the command
7 building?
8 A. Yes, that is so.
9 Q. So you can agree with me that at the time when you saw
10 one of the jeeps driven by Zejnil, that did not
11 necessarily mean that Zejnil was in the administrative
12 building?
13 A. Yes, I agree.
14 Q. You also know that during the war Mr. Delalic engaged in
15 various logistic transactions, and if he did come to the
16 barracks that that could have been connected with that
17 particular purpose.
18 A. I have to repeat that I had no idea of the kind of
19 business that Zejnil was engaged in, whether he was in
20 logistic or any other activities. It was only -- for
21 the first time that I saw his function written on one of
22 these papers when I visited his house with my wife, when
23 I saw his title written on one of these papers.
24 Q. As you have testified before this court, that was in mid
25 September or somewhere around that time?
Page 6067
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Since when have you known Mr. Delalic, Mr. Grubac?
3 A. I could not say exactly. I think I have known him for a
4 long time, starting many years before the war.
5 Q. And you know that he lived abroad for quite a number of
6 years, and occasionally only came to Konjic?
7 A. Yes, that is correct.
8 Q. And you also know that as a well to do affluent citizen,
9 he helped in Konjic various sports and cultural events,
10 activities, the regatta on the lake, boat race and
11 similar?
12 A. Yes, that is true.
13 Q. And as a doctor and the health centre manager, you also
14 know that he financially helped the health centre?
15 A. I know that he donated to the health centre when it was
16 in troubled times, and I believe that his intentions
17 were good and that he intended to help genuinely.
18 Q. You probably know that immediately prior to the war,
19 because of the problems with the dialysis of those
20 patients who had to be on such apparata, he procured
21 haemodialysis apparatus for the health centre which
22 unfortunately due to the circumstances was never
23 connected and used?
24 A. I hear this for the first time, but I do know that
25 before that he helped us provide and procure some
Page 6068
1 equipment for the health centre. I have not heard of
2 this particular apparatus and that is probably because
3 at that time I could no longer have any contact with the
4 health centre. I think he did such things because this
5 is something which was like him, was not alien to him,
6 but I cannot confirm it. I do not know it for a fact.
7 Q. Thank you. But as a friend, perhaps, I could say a
8 family friend of the Delalics, you knew that during the
9 war he held neither political nor state function or
10 office in Konjic?
11 A. Yes, I know that he held neither a political nor any
12 state office in Konjic.
13 Q. But he had the reputation of a good businessman and a
14 well to do citizen?
15 A. He did.
16 Q. And in a small town many people actually felt honoured
17 to be in his society, in his company; is that not so?
18 A. I believe that many people really liked to stick around
19 him and that they liked to be seen in his company, yes.
20 Q. Even some people who were not in his company liked to
21 brag down town how close to him they were; is that not
22 so?
23 A. Yes, I believe that is so.
24 Q. Dr. Grubac, Zejnil Delalic is a friend of yours, but also
25 because he is held in very high esteem, your attitude as
Page 6069
1 a doctor towards the members of his family, especially
2 towards his brother, had been prepared even before to
3 pay you back in various ways for your services; is that
4 not a fact?
5 A. Yes, it is.
6 Q. And irrespective of the war and the ethnic tensions
7 which emerged, at the moment when you met with
8 Mr. Delalic it was quite clear to you that Mr. Delalic had
9 not changed his attitude towards you; is that so?
10 A. It seemed to me that he had not.
11 Q. Perhaps you heard at the time that between Bradina and
12 Jablanica there was a mini-railway which started to
13 operate?
14 A. I even believe that they call it "Zejnil's railway".
15 Q. You know that he used significant personal funds and a
16 lot of his time to make it easier for the people to pass
17 these distances, to cover these distances under those
18 war circumstances; you have heard that?
19 A. Yes, probably the very fact that they call it Zejnil's
20 railway probably means that his role in it, in its
21 starting to operate, was indeed prominent.
22 Q. And you knew that this railway was used by all the
23 people without charge and the women in Bradina who
24 wanted to see their loved ones in Celebici could use
25 this railway as a safer way to reach Celebici, there was
Page 6070
1 no discrimination?
2 A. That is true.
3 Q. However, you also knew that there were many people
4 gossiping about Zejnil in Konjic, wagging their tongues,
5 and that some even harboured a hostile attitude to him?
6 A. Yes, some rumours were bandied about.
7 Q. Very well. Now you have verified your relationship,
8 your attitude towards Mr. Zejnil Delalic better, when you
9 were about to leave your wife told you that it had been
10 her idea when she saw that Zejnil was in Konjic to
11 address him, counting on this friendship of yours; is
12 that not a fact?
13 A. Yes, that was the reason why we had opted for her going
14 to see precisely Zejnil and, secondly, we also thought
15 he was in a position to do something for us, that he was
16 a person who could do something for us if he wanted to.
17 Q. I am talking about your release, so her addressing
18 Zejnil in connection with your release was the idea of
19 your wife, because you had told her to see
20 Dr. Jusufbegovic, is that not so?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. You have described quite well the position of the house
23 of Mr. Delalic, but I should only like to ask you, is it
24 true that this house is under a high cut in the rock and
25 that it is in a relatively safe place vis-a-vis the
Page 6071
1 shelling which was quite intensive at the time?
2 A. I think that it is in a safe place. Across from it
3 there is this cut in the rock and this house was
4 sheltered by this hill which was on the opposite side
5 from the house.
6 Q. During these two visits to Mr. Delalic's house and
7 probably while you were staying in Konjic, you found out
8 personally that in the basement of Mr. Delalic's house
9 there was housed a communication centre of the
10 headquarters of the Territorial Defence of the commune
11 of Konjic?
12 A. No, this is something I hear for the first time now.
13 Evidently you think that I was much better informed than
14 I actually was.
15 Q. In connection to your visits with Mr. Mucic to Celebici,
16 you said that Mucic at the time on the way would visit
17 Mr. Delalic's house?
18 A. Yes, both times he went to Mr. Zejnil Delalic's house on
19 the way.
20 Q. And you stayed in the vehicle?
21 A. Yes, I did.
22 Q. You did not see who Mucic met with in the house?
23 A. No, there was no way we could see that and we do not
24 know whom he met with in the house, nor whom he went to
25 see inside the house.
Page 6072
1 Q. Nor did Mucic tell you on what business he would go
2 inside the house, did he?
3 A. No, he did not, he never told us why he was going into
4 the house.
5 Q. Mr. Grubac, you were also in Celebici at the time the
6 international committee of the Red Cross visited?
7 A. No, I was not in Celebici at the time when it was
8 visited by the International Red Cross. I had been
9 released. That was in August, August 12th, I think, but
10 I was conditionally speaking released in parole.
11 Q. Yes, but when you returned from this recess, you could
12 notice that the situation in the camp, in the prison had
13 significantly improved, had it not?
14 A. Yes, it had. The situation had significantly improved
15 after the visit of the Red Cross.
16 JUDGE KARIBI-WHYTE: Thank you very much for recognising the
17 position to stop. We will continue with you tomorrow
18 morning.
19 (5.35 pm)
20 (Court adjourned until 10.00 am the following day)
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