Testimony of Ćamil Durmišević in the compensation lawsuit of Enes Bogilović and Mušan Džebo

On Thursday, May 31^st, 2012, Ćamil Durmišević testified before the First Basic Court in Belgrade in a compensation lawsuit against the Republic of Serbia, initiated by the Humanitarian Law Center on November 20^th, 2007, on behalf of Enes Bogilović and Mušan Džebo, former detainees of the Šljivovica and Mitrovo Polje camps.

On August 2^nd, 1995, Ćamil, along with a group of 90 others who were fleeing from Žepa, crossed the Drina River by raft onto the territory of the Republic of Serbia. There, they were detained by soldiers who escorted all the men in the group to the village of Jagoštica to await the arrival of the military police. On the way there, they were beaten and insulted. Upon their arrival in Jagoštica, two covered military troop transport trucks arrived and took the detainees to Šljivovica. Due to the heat and the lack of air, many of the detainees passed out in the trucks.

Ćamil knew Enes Bogilović and Mušan Džebo from before their detention. At one time during their detention, Ćamil brought Enes food from the canteen because he was in a poor health condition, after being beaten-up by the police. He was not even able to get out of bed for a period of time. The only medical care Enes had were the Apaurin pills brought by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mušan Džebo’s condition was a little bit better, although police officers beat and harassed every detainee. On one occasion, from the building where he was detained, Ćamil saw police officers beating up Enes, who was on the way to get some water. Ćamil said that they beat all the detainees with anything they could get hold of. In the entire camp, where 350 – 400 people were detained, there was only one faucet with cold water and one outside toilet. Three months after their arrival to the camp, fencing was erected around the faucet and an improvised bathroom was built. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross came every two weeks, but the police did not allow them to enter the camp. Detainees were also not allowed to speak to representatives of UNHCR about their conditions or the torture in the prison, because the police officers threatened to slit their throats if they said anything. During the last month, Ćamil was held in the same building as Enes and they left the camp together on January 29^th, 1996.