Serb imprisoned, tortured into false confession finally freed

Sretko Damjanovic a Serb sentenced in 1993 in Sarajevo to death penalty for allegedly committing war crimes was released today. In renewed trial, the Council of Judges of Sarajevo Cantonal Court sentenced Damjanovic to nine years in prison. Since he had already spent nine and half years in prison, he was released. Court experts found out evidence that Damjanovic was tortured from the moment he was arrested in November of 1992 and throughout the trial until he confessed to killing brothers Rasim and Kasim Krso and to raping two girls of Muslim nationality.

He was one of two Serbs beaten and tortured into signing a confession saying he killed two Muslim brothers – brothers discovered, years after the Serbs were convicted of murdering them, alive and with their families in the Sarajevo area.

http://www.suc.org/politics/media_watch/html/Pulitzer.html:

SERB CONVICTED OF MURDERS DEMANDING RETRIAL AFTER 2 "VICTIMS" FOUND ALIVE
Jonathan C. Randal, The Washington Post, March 15 1997
SARAJEVO, Bosnia - Sretko Damjanovic, a Serb soldier in the Bosnian civil war, was convicted of genocide four years ago for the murders of five unarmed people, several rapes and various other crimes. Now two of his victims have turned up alive, casting doubt on the testimony that led to his conviction and spurring his lawyer to demand a retrial.
The highly charged case was tried before a military tribunal run by the predominantly Muslim Bosnian government during the dark hours of 1993, when Sarajevo was enduring a long siege under Bosnian Serb artillery. Damjanovic and a friend, Borislav Herak, were convicted together and condemned to death by firing squad, a sentence later reduced to life imprisonment.

Brutal beatings by the Muslims left permanent damage:

"I had to admit acts that I had not committed. In prison they beat me, knifed me, kicked out my teeth, and I had to sign sixty pages of the confession I never even read, because I could not anymore bear bestial torture of the Muslim Police," said Damjanovic

His bones protrude. There are scars on his SHOULDERS AND ARMS. Many of his TEETH are missing. And, he claimed, he still URINATES BLOOD. "My health is ruined."

The Muslim brothers were active members of the Federation army while the Serbs were being accused and then sentenced for murdering them: They are alive and kicking; during the aggression, together with their brother Himzo, they fought in the glorious First, Sehovic's brigade

Only when Sretko Damjanovic’s uncle saw one of the supposedly murdered brothers, who was buying up Serbs’ sheep after the war, were the lies revealed:

JAILED SERBS' `VICTIMS' FOUND ALIVE, EMBARRASSING BOSNIA

``I didn't return to Vogosca until last year when the Serbs were leaving,'' he said, standing next to a small, muddy pen that held about two dozen bleating sheep.
``I was buying cattle in those days from a lot of the Serbs, including many of my old neighbors. I went to see the uncle of Sretko Damjanovic, an old friend, and he said he couldn't believe I was alive. He told me his nephew had been sentenced to death for killing my brother and me. They all looked at me as if I was a ghost.''
Blekic said he knew Damjanovic and his family. He described his relationship with the condemned man as ``normal.'' He said he never saw Damjanovic in April and May 1992, when the killings were supposed to have occurred.
U.N. international police monitors showed up last summer at Blekic's new house in Vogosca, which once belonged to a Serb neighbor, to photograph him and copy the information on his identity card. But this was the last he heard from the U.N. team.
``We are the only Blekic family in Vogosca,'' he said. ``There are no others.''
At the end of last year relatives of Damjanovic reached his lawyer in Sarajevo with the news. And in December Maric filed a motion for a new trial.
Herak and Damjanovic were arrested in November 1992 by the Bosnian Muslims after their car took a wrong turn and they drove into a Muslim checkpoint...

What do you make of this man, Kasim Blekic, who comes back to his old town to buy up cattle “from a lot of the Serbs, including many of my old neighbors” right when the Serbs are leaving? He actually seeks out old neighbors - that is how he was discovered - to get them to sell their cattle to him. In the article, it mentions only 2 dozen sheep at Kasim Blekic’s house - a home that once belonged to Serbs as well (did he purchase it too?) - so it doesn’t seem he is raising the cattle (which he had bought the summer previous) himself, but was reselling them to…who? Do you think this man was acting as an opportunist or an agent of the Bosnian government or both? Where does a man who served as “an ambulance driver for the army during the war” get all that money - it sounds as if his buying was extensive - buying from “a lot of Serbs, including many of my old neighbors”? It’s hard to believe this man, who arrives only at the most opportune time and takes thorough advantage of the situation of Serbs leaving (probably because the Dayton accords gave their land to the Muslim-Croat Federation), could have missed all the media publicity on his and his brother’s supposed deaths at the hands of Serbs. Judging by his actions, he seems someone more shrewd and in the loop than a simpleton.

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