Untitled

Humanitarian Law Centerthe prosecutor’s office. I want to remind you that at that time the state ofemergency decree was enacted allowing us to keep a person in detentionand conduct an investigation for 30 days. Since this was a case of murderin which 19 corpses were mentioned, my colleague and I applied the criminalprocedure provisions. We informed the District Prosecutor of the informationwe obtained and consulted him regarding the qualification of thecriminal act. In line with that, we made a detention order, which was putinto effect as of the moment we arrived at Prokuplje. After we interrogatedthe defendants, they were transferred to the prison department. They wereadmitted on 22 March 1999”.As an answer to the injured party’s representative’s question, the witnessanswered:“When I stated that the defendants gave several names I thought that theymentioned different names and it was all given in the statements. Nothingfrom their statements was left out. We informed Dragan Ilić of all detailssince he was our superior in this task. We also talked to the prosecutor regardingthe details. General Dragan Ilić did not suggest that we amend thecriminal complaint and include other persons. We were qualified enoughto know how to submit a criminal complaint. The complaint was composedin the following way: Demirović, Cvjetan, and other unidentified personswere charged with committing this criminal act. I want to remind oncemore that all of this was happening during the state of emergency and wedecided that the detention should last for 72 hours, thus we were not ableto identify other perpetrators.I had never submitted a criminal complaint before and I did not qualify thecriminal act until the Prosecutor said. After he gave his comments, we filedan indictment”.It is noted that the witness gave the following statement:“I talked to my colleagues from Prijepolje about this event and I had a feelingthat they had no idea about it. We did not discuss with our colleaguesfrom Prokuplje about the event itself or the things we were working on. Weinterrogated the defendants for around six or seven hours. The interrogationbegan approximately at 20:00 and lasted until 02:00 or 03:00 in the110