Muslim tells of soldiers raping her at age 15: Bosnian war tribunal focuses on sex crimes By MARLISE SIMONS Source: New York Times Published Sunday, February 18, 2001 THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Witness No. 50 was 15 when the soldiers picked her out at the detention center. Her mother and her grandmother watched her leave, still nurturing their dream that one day their girl would wear her veil, just as they had done, for a Muslim wedding in the village, with everyone dancing to Bosnian music under the trees. When she was brought back, shaking and crying, she kept her eyes down. She would not say a word or look her mother in the face. Night after night, it kept happening, soldiers taking her away and raping her, sometimes four or five at a time. Witness No. 50, as she is known to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, is now a troubled refugee, old at 23, one of the many whose lives were changed forever by the Bosnian war of 1992-95. For eight years, she did not speak of the hellish months in 1992 when she and other imprisoned women were trapped in "quasi brothels" in the town of Foca in southeastern Bosnia, passed around from soldier to soldier. She became pregnant. Her mother was raped. And finally, last year, she blurted out her story in the tribunal's courtroom. "I was ashamed before," she told the judge, Florence Mumba of Zambia. "Those words could not come out of my mouth." Her account, delivered between sobs and bursts of anger, has been common at the Foca trial, the first to focus entirely on wartime crimes of sexual violence. Three former Bosnian Serb fighters are charged with mass rape and forced prostitution involving dozens of women and girls. This is also the first trial in which an international court is prosecuting sexual slavery. "After World War II, tribunals dealt with slavery only in the form of slave labor," said Patricia Sellers, a legal adviser for sexual crimes to the prosecutor. "But forced prostitution was never tried." Legal scholars and human rights groups say they are now looking to the judges' verdict, planned for Thursday, as a ruling that may set an important precedent. Prosecutors are asking for prison sentences of 15 to 35 years. The three former soldiers agree they participated in the attack on Foca in 1992. But the six lawyers for the defense have rejected the charges. They presented alibis for Dragoljub Kunarac. A doctor testified Zoran Vukovic had become impotent during the relevant time. While not denying rape took place, they argued prosecutors had not proved rape because some women liked the soldiers. "They did not prove that the alleged victims of rape were exposed to any severe physical or psychological suffering," said the chief defense counsel, Slavisa Prodanovic. "The rape in itself is not an act that inflicts severe bodily pain." |