| Croatian soldier testifies at Storm trial |
| 16 May 2008 | 12:45
| Source:
Beta |
THE HAGUE --
Former Croat soldier Vladimir Gojanović testified yesterday at the Hague trial of 3 Croatian generals accused of war crimes during Operation Storm in 1995.
In his testimony, Gojanović stated that Serb villages had been razed and looted, and that he had witnessed the murder of one Serb prisoner. Generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač are accused of driving the Serb inhabitants from Knin, together with other war crimes committed in August and September 1995.
Gojanović, who participated in Storm as a member of the Croatian Army’s 113th brigade in Šibenik, testified that on August 6, 1995 he saw a Croatian soldier from his brigade killing a Serb prisoner-of-war in the village of Kistanje.
The witness stated that later he and others stopped the same man from killing another prisoner.
Gojanović confirmed that he had seen a lot of houses burnt down in Kistanje, between 35 and 40 percent altogether, as well as looting.
“There were a lot of soldiers in the village, some were checking houses, and others were looting and burning them down. All in all, there was no order whatsoever,” he recalled.
The witness added that on August 5, he had prevented a Croatian soldier from burning down a house with an old woman still in it in the village of Đevsrka.
“My platoon was in the village the whole night, and I found an old woman who was so weak that it was no use transferring her to a collection point, as we had with the other civilians… The next morning when other soldiers arrived, I saw some of them entering the house… They started to set the bed on fire and didn’t notice the old woman who was sitting in the corner hiding… I took the old woman out of the house and told them off,” Gojanović described.
He said that the village of Đevrska was “almost entirely intact” and “without visible damage” when his unit pulled out on August 6, 1995.
“A few days later, we returned to Đevrska and saw that the village had been completely destroyed… A lot of houses had been burnt, destroyed, smashed and ransacked,” the witness said.
According to Gojanović, who was mobilized by the Croatian Army on August 2, 1995, two days before the start of Operation Storm, neither he nor other soldiers received any orders on how to deal with prisoners and civilians. He said that he did not know if any Croatian soldiers had been punished for the crimes that they had committed.
The witness will continue to give testimony today.
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