This article is also available in: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp

The bridge over the Drina river in Visegrad. Photo: Wikimedia/Julian Nitszche.

The trial of Vuk Ratkovic, a former member of the Visegrad Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, opened at the state court in Sarajevo on Monday.

Ratkovic is charged with having tortured, abused, raped and beaten a Serb woman on several occasions in the period from June 1992 to January 1993.

“The defendant forced the Serb female to have sexual intercourse with him three times, because she was married to a Bosniak man,” state prosecutor Edin Muratbegovic said, reading the indictment.

The victim will appear as a protected witness at this trial. According to the charges, her husband and sons left Visegrad during the war between Bosnian Serb Army and the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while she stayed in the town with her young daughter.

“In mid-June [1992], the defendant, who was armed, came to her building, forcibly took her to her apartment, undressed and beat her and then raped her, telling her she was a Turk’s wife. He raped her in her apartment twice when no one else was present,” Muratbegovic said.

The prosecutor said the third rape was committed in the woman’s apartment in presence of her daughter and niece in mid-January 1993.

“While raping her on that occasion, the defendant told the injured party she had to respect him as her new husband and that she was his property. He told her she would no longer give birth to Turkish, but his Serbian children,” Muratbegovic said.

The indictment alleges that the defendant forced the woman’s daughter to tell him where her father was, while making her play Serb songs about murders of Bosniaks in the River Drina valley.

The trial will continue on March 5.