"IS IT WORTH GOING THROUGH ALL THIS,

AIM, Belgrade, January 4, 1994

A prisoner of five Croat places of torture

MERELY FOR THE SAKE OF LIFE"

Summary: A 32-year old engineer of technology from a Serbian village near Livno was captured in the summer 1992 on a military reconnaissance mission. He was in Croat prisons in Rama, Prozor, Tomislavgrad, Split, Ljubuski, where he was subjected to torture as a "Chetnik voivode".

Many are the men on crutches on the streets of Banjaluka. Still, many people know of the thirty-two year old Milorad Pejcin - he has survived five Croat camps. He still doesn't know whether he was lucky or unlucky to survive.

"I was captured on April 24, 1992", testifies Pejcin, a Serb from the village of Gubin, the Commune of Livno. He was an engineer of technology by profession and till the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina worked in the factory of military equipment "Slavko Rodic" in Bugojno.

His capture dates back to the time of the pact signed between the Croats and Moslems. He was captured by fifteen members of the Croat Defense Council and the so called "green berets" in the region of the village of Ravno, where he had been sent as a member of the Serbian armed forces to reconnoiter the enemy terrain.

RAMA

"I was taken to the village of Rama near Rama Lake and they immediately called the villagers by loudspeaker to gather and see 'a live Chetnik voivode'. They tied me to a chair and started to beat me. A blow from a boot broke my jaw, spliting it into two parts", tells Pejcin. "Then they started threatening to slaughter me, slowly carving my head with a knife. They connected my ears to the pins of an induction telephone set and by dialing it produced electric shocks. I was covered with blood gushing from my head and thought - I am gone, when the local population started to gather in front of the police station in which I was held captive".

They carried him out in front of the station and Pajcin heard, as he says, their voices as through a fog:

• We shall cut off his arms; we shall cut off his legs, we shall gouge out his eyes...

At that moment Davor Glasnovic, a Croat and a naturalized Canadian, turned up brandishing before his eyes a two-bladed knife on which the initials of the independent state of Croatia - NDH - were engraved. Lightning-fast he stabbed my left arm, unerringly piercing the vein from which blood gushed out. He called those present to "drink Chetnik blood", says Pajcin. Some of them extended their hands and washed their faces in his blood, others pulled his hair, scratched him, hit him... He recognized an acquaintance from before the war, one Ambrozije Tovil, who beat him with the butt of a rifle on his nails, trying to pull them out with a pair of pliers.

The rest is lost in unconsciousness. It also covered the experiences from the city of Prozor, where he was taken from Rama. From the police station in Tomislavgrad, to which he came from Prozor, he remembers only the beating with electrical truncheons and from Ljubuski that his jaw was broken in a third place, as well.

Pajcin does not remember why he was taken from prison to prison. He supposes that, when they saw him half dead, no one wanted him to die in their prison.

SPLIT

After Ljubuski, in which he lost consciousness for God knows which time after his jaw was broken, he came to in the territory of the Republic of Croatia, in the Split hospital at Firule. The first thing he saw were infusion and blood transfusion apparata. His jaw was operated on on the following day. When he returned to his room, the other patients, wounded Croats, spread the rumor that a "wounded Chetnik" was among them. They wanted to lynch him. Once again, the most zealous one was an acquaintance from before the war, one Pasalic from the Croat village of Raujni, only five kilometers from Pajcin's birthplace. Pasalic was an invalid, in a wheel-chair. The policemen on duty near the prisoner pushed the wheel-chair nearer to the bed and gave him police truncehons. The doctor on duty prevented the lynching.

A day later the hospital was visited, without any prior notice, by a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Since he could not speak, Pajcin was given a piece of paper and a pencil to write about his imprisonment. The Red Cross gave him a registration card. When the delegation left, he heard the interpreter of the delegation disclosing the contents of what he had written to someone in the next room. That was a sign to the policemen guarding him to start torturing him.

The story is continued in the cellar of the "Lora", a military prison, in a two by two meters room, with water up to the threshold, with no cover or anything to lie on. "The cellar in Lora was a factory for destroying people without bullets", says Pajcin.

"I spent six days in the cellar, but they did not come at me with full force, it was not my turn. I lost consciousness from all those wire cables, clubs and knives and the screams that were heard. People went crazy with the beatings. They died with their legs broken in ten places, of thirst, beating, pain... Once, when I was knocked down by a jet of water from a hose, they saw something square in the pocket of my trousers. They took it out and were amazed to see the registration card of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They transferred me upstairs."

Milorad Pajcin thought that all he had to wait for now was an exchange of prisoners. However, he soon saw that a prisoner was game in open season.

Some strangers came and inquired after him by name and took him to the roof of the building. They hit him, he says, with crowbars, clubs and handles, until it was clear to them that he could not stand up. With 11 broken ribs, three bruised vertebrae, dislocated kidneys and hips, they threw him into a van with two other prisoners. He thought that he was being taken to be exchanged and did not mind the pain.

LJUBUSKI

However, he arrived at Ljubuski for the second time. That was real hell, he says.

"On Bairam the guards on duty Branko Eres, Kreso Paradzik and Nedo Macic let one Ahmet from his cell to torture us all night. They opened all the cells, took off all our clothes and drove us outside into the rain only to drive us all back inside with wire cables. They wanted us to fall over each other so that those on the floor would suffocate under the burden of those over them, and those on top die of beating. This lasted all night until dawn, and with daybreak they made us crawl over the sand on our bare knees, and eat grass, where there was any. When we passed the latrine, we had to shove our hands into the faeces up to our elbows. Then they made us lick our fingers. After that they made us, hungry and thirsty as we were, eat salt..."

"They used to bring women, Serb women from the camp of Dretelj near Capljina. They brought an old woman, and she was raped before our very eyes. They also brought a girl about 12 -13 years old and her mother. They also made us rape them.

I remember a man from Stolac, a civilian, whom they asked to "admit to" how many Croats he had killed. The man had not killed a single one, but they wanted a confession at any cost. The started bidding, and when the poor man first said - one, and at the end said eighteen, one of the guards jumped to his feet, gouged out one of his eyes and made him swallow it".

Pajcin names his cell - mates in Ljubuski; Steva Antic from Konjic, Danilo Djurasovic from Mostar, Danko Domazet from Stolac, a young soldier of the YPA - Dragan Ristic from Ruma, Sinisa Jovanovic from Pirot... The extortion of confessions was common practice and an alibi for beating to death. "We would carry them out and they would pour petrol over them and set them on fire. Nothing more was heard of them".

"Thanks to sheer luck", Milorad Pajcin was exchanged on August 18, 1992 near Stolac. From there he was transported to Bileca, then to Belgrade, to the Military Medical Hospital. From Belgrade he reached Banjaluka. There, in the prison in Banjaluka he saw Davor Glasnovic, the man who had cut his vein when taking him prisoner. He says that the military authorities did not let him pay back Glasnovic, at least with his fists. And he himself doesn't know if he really wanted that.

Today, after everything, he wonders: Is it worthwhile to go through all this for the sake of life?

Gavrilo Mikic