ZAGREB, May 3 (Hina) - After a ten-day recess, the trial of Dinko Sakic, a former commander of the Jasenovac-based Ustashi concentration camp, resumed at the County Court in Zagreb on Monday with the testimony of Josip Habijanec, aged
75. In the beginning of May 1942, Habijanec was arrested on suspicion that he intended to join Partisans. After that he was taken to the Jasenovac camp, and in the beginning of August the same year he was transferred to the concentration camp in Stara Gradiska from which he was released at the end of May 1944. Saying that he "is not saving Dinko Sakic," the witness Habijanec stressed that he knew nothing about Dinko Sakic about whom he had heard for the first time in the press. Habijanec along with another 50 prisoners had been taken to the Jasenovac camp. In the camp he worked as a water-carrier to the "III C" camp section where mostly Romany (Gypsies) were located. The witness re
ZAGREB, May 3 (Hina) - After a ten-day recess, the trial of Dinko
Sakic, a former commander of the Jasenovac-based Ustashi
concentration camp, resumed at the County Court in Zagreb on Monday
with the testimony of Josip Habijanec, aged 75.
In the beginning of May 1942, Habijanec was arrested on suspicion
that he intended to join Partisans. After that he was taken to the
Jasenovac camp, and in the beginning of August the same year he was
transferred to the concentration camp in Stara Gradiska from which
he was released at the end of May 1944.
Saying that he "is not saving Dinko Sakic," the witness Habijanec
stressed that he knew nothing about Dinko Sakic about whom he had
heard for the first time in the press.
Habijanec along with another 50 prisoners had been taken to the
Jasenovac camp. In the camp he worked as a water-carrier to the "III
C" camp section where mostly Romany (Gypsies) were located.
The witness recalled an event when he had to bury six dead inmates.
"We carried them to previously dug holes, strewed lime over them,
and covered the hole," he told the court.
Saying that he knows "very little" about Jasenovac, Habijanec added
that it had not been good for anyone, but he claimed that it had been
much better in Stara Gradiska than in Jasenovac.
According to him, food in the Jasenovac camp was poor and scarce.
Typhoid and typhus reigned in the camp which he also contracted.
Many people died of illness, but it was not a mass phenomenon. He
added there was no dying of starvation. He stressed that he had
never been physically or mentally abused in the Jasenovac camp.
He heard of the "Zvonara" building, Picili's furnace and Gradina
where executions were carried out, according to reports by other
inmates.
Habijanec's recollections referred mostly to the Stara Gradiska
camp. He said there were individual killings of prisoners and added
that in the evening the commander of the camp would come and shoot a
bullet at their heads. He believed that the commander had been
Gagro. The witness could remember also that Miroslav Filipovic-
Majstorovic had ordered the execution of some 50 prisoners from
Kozara (north-western Bosnia-Herzegovina).
Responding to a question of Sakic's other defence counsel, Branko
Seric, the witness said that upon his arrival in the camp he had not
been notified of any rules which he had to obey. But, it was known
what was allowed and what was forbidden.
On Tuesday, Milos Despot is due to testify. Despot who should arrive
from the north-eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina, is the first
witness to come from outside Croatia. The head of the panel of
judges, Drazen Tripalo, has not yet possessed any information
whether this witness from the Bosnian Serb entity will appear at the
trial tomorrow.
(hina) jn ms