From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Serbian Atrocities: A Confession (fwd)
Date: 16 Dec 1992 03:45:27 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

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 Serb Learnt Rape and Murder - A Report by Richard Beeston The Times
 (UK)(14/12/9
 2)
 ===========================

 Borislav Herak delivered his gruesome confession of murder, rape and butchery
 in a clipped and awkward monotone which is as painful to watch as his story is
 to hear.

 He learned hand-to-hand combat using live pigs and was taught how to throw
 them, hold them down and slit their throats. Later he was told to practise
 on Bosnian prisoners of war and rape and kill young Bosnian women.

 "I did it because I had no choice, I had to obey orders," said the captured
 Serb fighter, whose deeds and his mitigation of them are chillingly reminiscent
 of the last time war crimes were committed in central Europe, half a century
 ago. The account of his six months service with Serbian forces north of
 Sarajevo is expected next month to be the basis for the war crimes trial of
 the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, when he will be charged with genocide,
 mass murder, rape and looting under Article 41 of the Yugoslav criminal code.

 His eyewitness testimony, the first by a participant in the notorious
 "ethnic cleaning", should also offer a unique insight into how Serb forces
 killed tens of thousands of Muslim and Croat Bosnians and drove hundreds
 of thounds from their homes in the past eight months of fighting.

 The most disturbing episodes of Mr Heraks's activities began in June,
 soon after he left his home in Sarajevo and joined the Biochanska
 Serb Militia where he received his basic training. The first hint
 of the sort of work expected of him emerged when he and other Bosnian
 Serb volunteers were shown a demonstration of hand-to-hand combat
 using pigs. Soon afterwards, in the village of Donja Bioca, he was
 ordered to repeat the exercise on Bosnian Muslims, Mr Herak, 21,
 said in an interview at Sarajevo's Victor Bubanj military prison.

 He killed three prisoners with a 6in hunting blade, an episode he
 recounted in a detached, almost dispassionate fasion: "They did not
 resist, but one of them told me he had a wife and two children. His
 name was Ahmed Ziad Osman." Mr Herak volunteered the information
 readily and insisted that he had not been coerced or mistreated during
 his captivity. Professor Aida Hasimbegovic, a clinical psychologist,
 said he displayed no severe psycological problems that would make him
 unfit to stand trial.

 That impression was confirmed when he described in a clear manner the grim
 saga of how his unit took part in the "cleansing" of the Muslim village
 of Ahatovic, north of Sarajevo, last summer. This time he used a Kalash-
 nikov rifle to shoot 20 civilians and the joined other Serbs in looting
 homes.

 "The order was that nobody should stay alive, we should kill everybody,"
 he said, adding that the instructions had come down the Serbian chain
 of command from the area commander in the town of Ilijas. "We did not
 have any choice. He told us what had to be done, and we did it."

 In probably the most gruesome episode, he said that Serb fighters
 were encouraged to rape young Bosnians at a prison turned military
 brothel where inmates were killed to make way for newcomers.

 "They told us for the sake of Serbian morale that we should go to
 the prison at the Sonja Motel in Vogosca where there were 80 to 90
 girls", he said, speaking through an interpreter. "I went about 10
 times in all, maybe two or three times a week. I was told by Miro
 Vukovic, [the Serbian Commander of the brothel] to take the girls
 away and kill them because there was no room to keep them or enough
 food to feed them.

 "I raped the girls in the motel and then took them to the Zuc hill
 [north of Sarajevo], shot them and hid their bodies. I raped 10 girls
 in their twenties and killed six of them," he said, identifying
 the victims by name - Anissa, Fatima, Maira, Sabina and Senada.
 He insisted that he was forced to act against his will because of
 the threat of punishment by his superiors. He added that Serb commanders
 continually told their men that Bosnian troops were performing worse
 against Serbian civilians and that they were in a fight for their
 survival.

 What makes his account disturbing is the clear impression that his actions
 were by no means an isolated but part of a widespread practise. The prospect
 of trial and execution did not daunt the young prisoner, who said that
 he looked forward to the judgement because he could no longer live with
 what he had done. But he doubted it would have any impact in preventing
 further brutalities.

 "All I know is that while I am here sitting and talking, these same horrors
 are going on somewhere else," he said.

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