Vera Utrzan and Jelena Karanovic, the mother and sister of a Yugoslav People’s Army soldier from Serbia who was killed in Zagreb in September 1991, told Belgrade Higher Court how Marko Utrzan went to do his mandatory national service with the army, then was captured and killed.
Marko Utrzan started mandatory military service in March 1991, and in May that year he turned 20.
His mother Vera Utrzan explained that he was first stationed in Slovenia and that after a while, he called from Croatia and said they had been transferred “overnight” to an ammunition storage facility in Rakitje, near Zagreb.
The Yugoslav People’s Army then notified the family that he had died and transferred his body to Serbia.
“Two days later [after the funeral], my husband and I went to Zagubica [village in Serbia], because there was a boy from Zagubica who was also there [in captivity in Croatia], he told us that they tied them up, took off their sneakers and beat them on the soles of their feet,” Vera Utrzan told the court.
“He said that the last time Marko came [from being beaten], he said, ‘Better to kill me than to torture me like this,’” she added.
Branko Tunic, a Croatian citizen, is tried in absentia at Belgrade Higher Court for war crimes against prisoners of war.
According to the indictment, in the second half of September, Tunic, then a member of Croatian National Guard, beat, humiliated and tortured 14 captured Yugoslav People’s Army soldiers and killed one of them.
The indictment alleged that Tunic beat them with the butt of a gun and a rubber baton, handcuffed them and forced them to lie on the ground, then stamped on them with his boots and jumped on them, threatened them with a knife and a gun, and put out cigarettes on their bodies.
On September 30, according to indictment, while beating Marko Utrzan, Tunic shot him in the head and killed him.
Utrzan’s mother said that date of her son’s death was confirmed by a medical record from Croatia.
Utrzan’s sister Jelena Karanovic told the court that according to information family got from other captured soldiers, “there were few guards who did not torture them” but that “the worst was a Muslim, an Albanian, whose nom de guerre was Branko, they called him that”.
Tunic was tried in Croatia for the killing and acquitted. However, war crimes prosecutor Dusan Knezevic said the beginning of trial in Serbia that he was only tried for using excessive force.
Both witnesses said no official institution from Croatia has ever called them or talked to them about the case, and that they did not know that any proceedings were held there.
Source : BalkanInsight
