CECILIJA COKLJAT TESTIFIES IN SAKIC CASE

( Editorial: --> 2402 ) ZAGREB, Aug 7 (Hina) - The pre-trial proceedings in the case against Dinko Sakic, World War II commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp, continued Friday with the testimony of Cecilija Cokljat (aged 79). Cokljat told the Zagreb County Court investigating judge she knew nothing about Sakic and had learnt about him only recently in newspapers. Cokljat, like her husband Milan Bagic who testified yesterday, was arrested in May 1943 in Osijek. After she had spent ten days in Osijek prison because of a police investigation, she was transferred to the Stara Gradiska concentration camp. She remained there until October 1944, when she was transferred to the women's section of the Jasenovac concentration camp. At the end of December 1944, Cokljat was transferred to a prison in Zagreb and on January 17, 1945 she was exchanged along with another 15 women for two or three high-ranking German officers in Pisarovina. Cokljat also spoke about the difficult conditions in Stara Gradiska and Jasenovac. She recalled when several Ustasha soldiers separated an unknown number of women and took them away from Jasenovac into an unknown direction. Cokljat could not say whether the women had been taken away to some other German prison or to be executed. Cokljat is one of the main witnesses for initiating an investigation against Sakic's wife Nada Esperanza Tambic de Bilanovic Sakic. Cokljat has no knowledge of Nada Sakic either and the only Ustasha official she knows by name is the former commander of the women's section of the Stara Gradiska camp, Maja Buzdon. (hina) rml /mbr 071703 MET aug 98