LORA WAR CRIMES TRIAL RESUMES

SPLIT, Nov 7 (Hina) - The trial against eight former military policemen charged with war crimes committed in the Lora military prison in 1992 continued on Thursday after a recent adjournment with the testimony of Milosav Katalina. #L# According to the indictment, Katalina was tortured and beaten in the jail in the summer of 1992, threatened with a gun in the mouth and connected to an inductor telephone. A former Yugoslav People's Army officer who retired in 1985 and lived in Split more than 30 years, spent three hours testifying how he had been detained in the Lora prison for 10 days and constantly beaten, spat at and abused. "They beat me with everything from all sides, so that even my eardrums burst. They connected me to an inductor telephone, increasing the voltage until I would go stiff with pain and fall unconscious. They would pour water over me in front of a ventilator. One who introduced himself as a 'spine specialist' put a pistol in my mouth while others beat me with batons. They stripped me naked in the courtyard and one of the military policemen practised his boxing skills on me. I don't know the names of those who beat me, but they called the one who held the pistol in my mouth 'Pepe' and the one in the yard 'Boxer'," Katalina stated. He also remembered a young man whose speciality was to force prisoners to fight and if they refused he himself would beat them. "Meho", a civil policemen from Omis, was also in the jail, the witness said. He was detained for smuggling arms and beat prisoners as he wished. One morning a commission came to inspect the jail, said the witness. The inmates were made to clean the jail and were ordered not say a word about the beatings. Asked by the commission if he was beaten, Katalina said that he was. Later "Pepe" made him face the wall, hitting him in the back with his feet until he had no more strength. "He threatened they would bring my wife, daughter, daughter-in- law, and granddaughters to the jail and rape them and make me rape them," the witness said. He added he still had health problems as a result of the beatings at Lora and "would rather they had killed me". Katalina said he saw Pepe and Meho in Split last year and assumed they were not in prison. He said that after he was released he did not have any peace as there were people coming and threatening him to leave Split because they wanted his apartment. He added he was proud that his granddaughters were Croats, and that while he was detained in the Lora jail in 1992 his son-in-law was a Croatian soldier in the war. The witness cried during his testimony. The defence attorney Michelle Squicciari requested the panel of judges that the witness identify the accused. The panel refused because the witness himself said he would not be able to recognise them except from photographs taken in 1992. The witness was attacked by about 15 people in October 2002 when he responded to a subpoena from an investigating judge. He was threatened and photographed, and took refuge in the chambers of the county state prosecutor at the time, Mladen Bajic. He appeared again the following week, escorted by a policeman, but was approached by someone who threatened they would kill him. Katalina pressed charges and filed a lawsuit for damages for the events in Lora. He was also threatened in front of his home and finally left Croatia. He went to live with relatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was the reason he did not respond to subpoenas to testify. Another witness, a former military policemen, Damir Borsic, also testified today. Borsic was in a commission that visited the jail in the spring of 1992, together with Mario Barisic and Milorad Paic. He did not know about any abuse occurring in Lora even though Barisic told him that he had seen mutilated people in the jail. Amongst the prisoners he saw there were no women and children, and some had bruises on their arms and faces, Borsic said. The trial will continue on Friday. (hina) sp/ha sb