Accused Serbian war criminal denies torture

Selma Milovanovic

A CROATIAN man imprisoned by Serb forces during the early 1990s has told a Sydney court of hourly beatings and torture allegedly committed on prisoners in a tiny room of a stone fortress where the inmates slept on bare, thin chipboard and were forced to urinate inside.

Velibor Bracic, 41, travelled from Croatia to testify in a defamation case brought by Dragan Vasiljkovic, now known as Daniel Snedden, against Nationwide News, the publisher of The Australian newspaper, at the NSW Supreme Court.

Snedden, an Australian citizen known during the Balkans conflict as Captain Dragan, led a paramilitary Serb unit in the Croatian province of Krajina during the early 1990s, the court was told earlier.

In a separate case Snedden, 54, is appealing against a Federal Court judge’s order to extradite him to Croatia for questioning on war crimes allegations, which he strenuously denies.

Mr Bracic, now a construction company owner, joined the Croatian police shortly before the war in Croatia began in 1991.

He said he was captured by a former schoolmate-turned-Serb paratrooper during a reconnaissance mission undertaken in June 1991.

After three days of beatings at a garage in the town of Golubic, he was transferred to a stone fortress on a hill above his home town of Knin.

"They said I would never come out of there alive," Mr Bracic testified through an interpreter.

He said he and five other men were kept in a small, round, stone chamber which had a tiny window four metres above the ground.

The men were forced to urinate inside and slept on thin chipboard with no bed linen.

Mr Bracic said he was beaten and whipped all over his body. "Every hour, during the day and night, it was regularly done," he said. "Beating, kicking, hitting with a rifle, pointing the rifle into our mouths, putting the finger on the trigger."

He said that during the beatings, the guards spoke with "fearful respect" of their commander, who they said was an experienced warrior.

Snedden, who has been detained in Parklea jail for more than three years, claims an article published by The Australian sensationally portrayed him as authorising and condoning murder, torture and rape.

Justice Megan Latham, who is hearing the defamation case, will effectively rule on the evidence about Snedden’s wartime activities before a Croatian court has a chance to do so.

Earlier yesterday Colton Perry, an American who volunteered with the Croatian National Guard at the end of 1991, said Snedden once told him he would be shot after Mr Perry was captured and imprisoned by Serb forces.

Mr Perry, 41, was a French Foreign Legion soldier for four years before he joined Croatian forces. He was captured by Serbs in May 1992 and imprisoned and tortured for several months.

Mr Perry denied a suggestion by Clive Evatt, SC, counsel for Snedden, that the encounter with Captain Dragan never happened. The case continues today.