interview by Zoran ZUZA
"Before the war, Serbs were only about 5 percent of population in Pazarici and Tarcin. There was not a single soldier or any organized Serb military structure there that could possibly offer resistance to Muslims. In spite of that they made the decision to arrest all Serb males aged between 14 and 85 and jail them in 'Silos'. I was arrested on May 26 in front of my family home in Pazaric, although I had turned my official weaponry to the Muslim police about ten days before. During the arrest they made a spectacle by surrounding the whole village by police vehicles and using a bullhorn with which they invited me to surrender. I calmly left the house and tried to talk to the police. All of those men were my acquaintances from the service, but it was not possible to talk to them anymore. I was immediately, without any explanation or an indictment, jailed at 'Silos' where I spent almost four years. I am among the camp inmates with the longest 'tenure' in Bosnia-Hercegovina."
REPORTER: How many Serbs passed through "Silos" and what were the conditions in the camp?
JOVICIC: Besides about 550 men, there were also 11 women. They even imprisoned a pregnant woman. She was released only after she reached the seventh month of pregnancy. The conditions cannot be described with words. Between 40 and 60 camp inmates were kept in cells measuring 5 by 5 meters [15 by 15 feet]. We were beaten daily. No words need be wasted on describing verbal abuse. The beatings were conducted by the local guards and the Bosniaks from Sandzak who were only passing through Tarcin. Anyone who wanted to torture and beat prisoners found open doors in "Silos". According to what I know, 25 inmates died in the camp. I saw those deaths with my own eyes, but it is possible that there were more of them. At first, during the first two months in prison, the inmates lost on average between 30 and 40 kilograms [65 to 85 pounds]. In 63 days I lost 43 kilograms. On August 15 1992 I weighed only 34 kilograms [about 70 pounds]. Out meal consisted of five spoons of some liquid and one twelfth of a loaf of bread [weighing 2 pounds]. It got a bit better after six months after a delegation of the International Committee of Red Cross from Mostar visited the camp. Until that visit on November 26, 1992, when the camp inmates were registered for the first time, no one knew about "Silos". Representatives of the ICRC brought food to the camp but at first the guards would keep it. When the ICRC representatives found out about that, they gave the food to the inmates directly.
Who are the people who were, directly and indirectly, responsible for the murders and maltreatment of civilians in the camp?
The responsibility above all falls on the camp warden Becir Hujic and his deputies Halid Covic and Serif Mesanovic. All three of them were prison guards in the Central Prison in Sarajevo, with many years of experience in the beating of people. The order to set up a camp and imprison Serbs came from two senior officials in the pre-war Police, Enver Dupovac, a former chief inspector of the Bosnian Police, and Muhamed Turcinovic, a.k.a. Zeko, who was the head of one of departments of the State Secret Service before the war. All of them still live in that region, and some of them still work for the Police. Dupovac is a police chief in Hadzici, while Turcinovic is a senior official of the Muslim secret service AID. As "Silos" was a military Muslim camp, commanders of the First Sarajevo Corps of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina were responsible for its existence and running. At the time security officer of the First Sarajevo Corps, Nezdad Ajnadzic, is today a member of the Chiefs of Staff of the Federation Army. He visited "Silos" on two occasions, on January 25 and March 8 1994, together with Edhem Godinjak, a former Police Chief in Trnovo. I shall never forget what he said: "I could kill all of you like dogs, but I won't do it because we need someone to dig trenches on the front line." I realized in Hrasnica that we would have been better off had he killed us. We dug trenches and dugouts in open space, without shelter, at in 40 degrees Celsius heat [100 degrees F], tied with steel cords twenty meters long, whose ends were held by Muslim guards hiding in the trenches.
How were you moved from "Silos" to Hrasnica and what took place there?
We were moved to Hrasnica in military trucks. Our arms were tied with wire or rope, and our eyes were covered so that we had no idea where we were being taken. I spent six and a half months in the camps in Hrasnica. In Hrasnica, there were several camps, in the primary school "Aleksa Santic", in garages, at the "Famos" soccer club stadium, and in cellars of buildings built before the war. The first inmates were imprisoned in Hrasnica camps on April 11, 1992 and these camps were never registered. The Fourth Motorized Brigade of the First Sarajevo Corps was in charge of the camps in Hrasnica. Its commander was a former policeman in the pre-war special forces unit, Fikret Prevljak. Vahid Aladuz was the security officer in that brigade. He was my neighbor before the war from Hadzici, and today he is a senior official of the Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina Police. Hrasnica was especially hard for me, as I experienced horrific suffering there. They beat me non-stop for fifteen days and nights. They destroyed my right kidney and broke several ribs. I received over two hundred blows with wire cords, and in comparison with those cords a police baton is heavenly!
In your opinion, who in the Bosniak political and military leadership knew, or had a reason to know about the existence of the camp "Silos" in Tarcin?
Vahid Karavelic, at the time the commander of the First Sarajevo Corps, knew. He spent more than ten days in the camp overseeing the work of the Serb camp inmates on the runway of the helicopter landing pad and a gas station that was supposed to serve it. He distributed ranks to the guards, prompting them thereby to maltreat us more, in order to speed up the construction. The camp was only 20 meters away from the helicopter landing pad and the building housing the headquarters of the 14th Division of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina. On four occasions, during 1994 and 1995, I saw from the distance of between 10 and 15 meters Alija Izetbegovic and recognized my pre-war colleagues among his bodyguards. Izetbegovic passed through the tunnel under the airport runway to Tarcin, from where he flew to different parts of the country in a helicopter. It is interesting that Izetbegovic used helicopters marked by red crosses, and the whole region was secured during his visits by Malaysian UNPROFOR soldiers. I got a confirmation that Izetbegovic knew about the existence of the camp "Silos", including the identity of the inmates, in 1994, when two of his escorts, Fadil Pekic and Akir Sisic paid me a visit. They promised that they would urge Izetbegovic to order that I be released and then, two hours after their departure, the camp guards beat me so badly that I spent 15 days in coma. In 1996 in Pale I found out that Haris Silajdzic also knew about the existence of the camp in Tarcin. I knew him through my work and before the war I had coffee with him at least once a week. During the election campaign Silajdzic was a guest of the then Serb Television in the Pale studio and I, to make the irony more poignant, was in charge of making sure that the guests from the Federation were safe. I shall never forget an encounter with Haris Silajdzic in the office of the editor-in-chief, full of guests and journalists. He was obviously scared when he saw me. I asked him whether he had known about "Silos" and that I had been kept in that camp. To my surprise, he said he had. He tried to excuse himself by saying that he had written four times to Izetbegovic urging that I be released. I replied that it was good that he wrote four times to Izetbegovic, because I spent four years in the camp. God forbid, he could have written five or six times...
Have you had any contacts with the representatives of the Hague Tribunal, since the publication of your book, or previously?
It is outrageous that no one, not only from the Hague Tribunal, but also none of the officials of the Republic of Srpska, has displayed any interest. I gave a statement on 49 single spaced pages to a judge from Yugoslavia who worked for the Federal Committee for the collection of data about war crimes against Serbs. True, in 1997 I was one of key witnesses in the trial of Izetbegovic in front of the district court in Banja Luka. From this vantage point, I think that that trial was a farce, not because Izetbegovic was tried, but because that trial was later stopped.
What do you think about the behavior of RS regarding the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal?
In my opinion, RS made a huge mistake by refusing to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal. For the sake of argument, in 1996 I demanded from General Walker, at the time commander of the IFOR land forces, to assist us in opening mass graves in Kazani 1 and 2 in Sarajevo. I was dumbfounded when he replied: "Sir, only you are showing any interest in that. Kazani were cleaned up a long time ago!"
Do you fear for your life because of what you've experienced and could testify about? We ask you about this because you've spent time in Sarajevo while working on providing security for the persons working in the joint institutions?
It was hard to meet some of my former colleagues in Sarajevo. I have heard insults and questions of the type what I was doing there. There were threats and blackmail as well. However, apart from death, I cannot experience anything worse than what I've already been through. Even today I cannot put behind those traumas. I have nightmares and flashbacks.