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Second Witness Statement ofFRANO KOZUL (JOZO)
(Original Statement at Memorial Annex 154)
Address: ••.
Date ofBirth: 02.10.1948.
Place of Birth: TURCINOVIéi, SIRO KI BRIJEG
Occupation: RETIRED
Date of statement: 14.09.2010.
Location: VUKOVAR
Witnessed by: ZVONIMIR BODANAC, CRIME OFFICER IN VUKOVAR COUNTY
POLICE STATION
I have been shown a copy of a statement dated 29. 03. 1993. the first sentence of which states :" 1 was
captured in Vukovar as a member of the civilian protection, in the center of the cil.y" The statement
contains 6 pages.
I confirm that the statement I have been shown was made by me. I confirm that its contents are true to
the best of my knowledge and belief. I confirm that I gave the statement voluntarily, and was not
subjected to any threat, force or inducement in making it.
l believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.
Frano Kozul 14.09.2010.
Signed Date
Witnessed by:
Zvonimir Bodanac 14.09.2010.
Signed Date
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ANNEX 154:
WITNESS STATEMENT OF FRANJO KOZUL
Croat, born on 1948 in Turcinovié, region of Siro ki Brijeg, he worked as a workman, lived
in Vukovar, .now in Zagreb.
TESTIMONY
I .was captured in Vukovar as a member of the civilian protection, in the center of the city.
The representatives of Vukovar city bad negotiations with the former JNA (Yugoslav
People's Army). Also doctor Vesna Bosanac and Marin Vidié-Bili took part in those
negotiations. They agreed that the town would surrender, and people would be free to go
where ever they wanted, at !east that was what they said to us, to us who gathered in the
building of Vukovar's hospital, and we came from ali shelters in the city, because we
thought that we would have better chances to survive if we were together. Doctor Bosanac
said that the buses for us were in Vukovar's hospital at that moment in the evening, doctor
Bosanac came, and she told us that we should go back to our shelters, because as she said
they (the army) bad a list of ali shelters in the city an_d it was agreed that they would come
with buses in front of every shelter, but at that time the Chetniks bad already started to
occupy the city, and bad occupied sorne parts. We considered that suggestion stupid, and
we didn 't do that, but we stayed in the hospital building till the representative came, and
that was the commander of the former Yugoslav People's Army- major Sljivanèanin, who
said: "Y ou will go to a gathering center in the shelter of ''Velepromet", and first mothers
with children and older people will be separated from the others." In that moment we knew
that they had cheated us. We knew that because no one from International Red Cross and
European Community observers who were in Vukovar then came to see us. The transport
be gan. They took us to the warehouse of ''V elepromet" and into the courtyard of
cooperative "Vupik", Vukovar that was across ''Velepromet". I didn't see that anyone was
tortured, maltreated or killed in the hospital area, but I saw a large group of local men in
front of the hospital building, and they were dressed in different uniforms, and with
Chetnik's marks. They just threatened us, but no one was burt. 1 knew lots of them, because
they worked and Iived with us till then. I was taken into the courtyard I mentioned before,
together with a group of men and women, and they separated women on one side and men
on the other at once. There were different men in that courtyard, dressed in different
uniforms, and most of them were local men, who used flash-lights to recognize who they
knew from our group, and they took out men by a criterion only they knew. DARKO FOT,
a local Chetnik whose father was a Croat, took me and a few more men out of the group.
They took my group into the courtyard of "Velepromet". There I saw lots of local Serbs in
different uniforms, and ali of them took out and separated men, and took them in, for me,
an unknown direction. There were lots of women and girls among them, also in uniforrns,
and they did what ail of them did. I knew all of them by sight, and the worst were lNKA
ST ANKOVIé, daughter of ex director of Vukovar's radio and ber hus band VLADO
KOSié, then wife of ZDRA VKO éUK. who was also in uniform, then NADA from the
perfume shop and lots of others that I didn't know by name. MiéO :E>ANKOVIé, ex waiter
from Vukovar, a man who was known as a criminal even before the war, and was in prison
as a murderer, that man took me and sorne men out of the group. During that time there was
chaos. I could hear shots, people screamed and sobbed, 1 could hear bits, beating, and the
worst scene was a Chetnik who held a head that was eut off in one band and a knife covered
with blood in the other. His name is MIRKO, and they called him CAPALO. I knew that
1
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man weil, he was a gambier and vagabond before the war, he bad a tendency to violence.
After a while, BORO ZNANOVIé took me and another man from the group. He took us
out to the dark, and since 1 knew him, I asked him: "Boro, where are you taking us?'', and
he said: "Be quiet, 1 am taking you to a safe place, tonight it will be rough here." He took us
in front of one building, it was the joiner's workshop àf''Velepromet". There was one tall
Chetnik, half drunk, he was searching two men in front of us. I saw a big pile of money,
and under the table was an even bigger pile of different documents. When it was my tum,
he asked me to give hlm my documents. I gave him my wallet, he took my coat off, and my
leather jacket, and I was only in a !lhirt, and he did ail that with filat other man who was
with me. He opened an iron door of the workshop, and pushed us in. There 1 saw about 50
people, they were scàred, and they were different people by nationality and occupation. 1 ·
heat:d from those peopie that they called that building "the cell of death". They brought
sorne men after me, one policeman-B.!., from Sarengrad, MiéO BANKOVIé bit him over
face with a gun and eut him. After that they threw in one young man, botb of his legs were
shot through. After sorne time BANKOVIé came into the room again and took out
policeman B., we knew nothing ofhim after that. After a while the door was opened again,
and one drunk Chetnik came with an automatic gun in his bands, and he said: "At 9
o'clock, no, at halfpast 9 you will go for execution." I don't know when after that, but the
door was opened again, but that was not the same man from before, it was an older man in
uniform, he was a major. As he entered, hè said: "Get up men." You can imagine how we
felt after aU we bad gone through, how frightened we were. We knew that it was the end.
But, the major said: "Hold your bands, two by two, put your heads down, and get out
slowly, there's a bus postponed. We entered the bus, he ordered the bus driver to drive the
bus behind the military vehicle, and to start going towards Negoslavci. That was done. I
saw 9 buses behind us. At one point during the night, we started. Through Negoslavci and
Sid we arrived in Sremska Mitrovica. We stopped between the military barracks and the
penitentiary. We stayed thère till the moming. As the morning came, lots of different
people started to gather around us. Sorne of them were in civilian clothes, and most of them
in uniforms, they called themselves "volunteers", and they would come in the buses, offend
our people any way they could, they would beat us with everything they bad.
Three men entered the bus where 1 was, they asked our names, they beat ali of us with
wood en sticks. They broke one of th ose sticks on one of us. Sorne time during the day, they
took us to a racecourse in Sremska Mitrovica, there they allowed us to do a cali of nature,
and we received sorne water, but ail the time they bad their guns pointed at us. ln the
evening we started again, towards Novi Sad, we passed it, drove through Backa, and came
to Zrenjanin. During the occupation in Vukovar, I bad beard that a camp for people from
Vukovar bad been established in Zrenjanin. What I bad beard came true. We passed
through Zrenjanin, and drove for about 10 more kilometers, and when we arrïved on one
deserted farm, we stopped. There were lots of people, in different uniforms, civilians,
military police. Th~ buses stopped in front of one stable. As we entered the stable, we bad
to pass through cordon of men who beat us with everything, the cordon was about 30
meters long. They ordered me to make a list of people that were there, so 1 knew the
number, I made a list of 1242 people, in alphabetical order. After sorne time 1 found out
that in another stable were 480 men. They were offending us, beat us, maltreated us, and
they called one ofthose stable "Maksimir", and the other one "Poljud". During the fust few
days we were sitting and sleeping one over the other, on .bare concrete. They would give us
sorne water, one little slice of bread and sorne cheese, twice a day, and they beat us and
tortured us 24 hours a day. I cannot describe ali k.inds of physical and psychological
tortures, I would never imagine tbat people we lived with, and worked with would do that
crime. Till the time we arrived into the stables they beat us where ever they could. They
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beat me over my back, and since I was sitting on the right side of the bus, they beat me also
over my legs, and J still have consequences. They àlso beat us over the genitals, and they
tortured us the most till the arrivai of the International Red Cross, which happened on
December 4, 1991. Since that time people died from beating, and the tonures went on and
on. J know that from beating 9 men died, among them 1vica Kamerla and Branko Koh. As 1
said, the Red Cross came and they made a list of ali of us, and they gave us our camp
number. After that killing stopped, but tortures, psychological and physical continued. One
way ofpsychological torturing was that we had to sing the Yugoslàv hymn, every moming
and every night, and Chetnik's songs every time our guards, military police men, wanted.
What was the worst for me, it's known to every prisoner, was: "Head down and bands on
back". We had to be like that all the time, when we went to toilet, .lunch, breakfast, dinner,
questioning, we bad to sit like that where they put us: The questioning stared. We were
taken there in some order and priority they made. I think that they thought they bad
captured the biggest cut-throats and Ustashas in Vukovar, and that they bad done something
"big". But, in fact, that were mostly civil_ians, from 11 to 90 years of age. Majority of us
received a beating before or after questioning, as much as the examiner wanted. They tried
to accuse us of actions that never took place, not in Vukovar or anywhere else. As I
understood, they wanted to accuse us of what they did. They didn't treat ali of us the same,
sorne of us went only once for questioning, and some of us a few times. First people that
were released from that camp, it was called STAJiéEVO, were mostly Serbs that were
among us, and people from mixed marriages, and other nationalities, and it is know that in
Vukovar that was 22% of them. They searched the most for Herzegovinians, I think
beca!JSe they were afraid of them, they called them "blackshirts". God forbid that you bad
anything black on you and ifyou were Herzegovinian.
They searched us, took ali we bad, specially foreign money, and they said that they would
give it back, but they never did. As they searched us, we had to come in front of the camera,
and tell our data, and from where in Vukovar we were. They forced us severa! times to
write an appeal to the president and the Republic of Croatia, because, as they said, our
govemment bad abandoned us, and did not need us, but we knew that it wasn't true; and we
never signed. In the meantime, they released a few minor groups of people, and the fust
exchange was when they released 11 0 members of the Croatian police that were with us.
Before us, they released ali medical staff also, although we needed them because of the
terrible conditions we lived in. Bed food, water full of sulfur, and great cold. When the
International Red Cross visited us, J asked one of the translators, he was a black man, if he
bad ever seen a camp that bas been worst than this one, and he said: "I have seen ali camps,
and J saw only one worst thçm this, it was in Bangladesh, and believe me, it bad to be closed
down". There was barbed wire ali around the camp, guards everywhere, just like those
camps from World War Il. On December 24, 1991 they ordered us to clean the camp. Some
people thought that we would be set free, but probably, because of the pressure that World's
public opinion put on them, the camp bad to be closed. They took us to Sremska Mitrovica,
and to military prison in Nis. They bad alphabetical order, and those who were up to letter
"R" went to Sremska Mitrovica, and those from "R" to "S" to Nis. As we arrived in
Mitrovica, we saw men from Vukovar, from Mitnica. From Stajiéevo also arrived military
policemen and examiners, a few days after us. The questioning started again. I went for
questioning 6 times. Every week-end since 1 arrived, Serbs from Vukovar would come,
they would get lists with our names from the penitentiary's management, and they would
called out whomever they wanted. They beat us the most. They called me twice. MILE
TURUKALO and JOV ANOVIé wh ose nickname was BOGA, and with whom 1 was a
friend before the war, they called me fust time, they stayed in Vukovar with our people till
the end, but when Vukovar feU, they joined the "other side". they were saying sorne
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information about me, that I was one of the establisbers of the HDZ (Croatian Democratie
Union), that 1 had on my head a big chess symbol (symbol ofCroatia), so they searched my
bouse, and they said that they found that symbol tbere which was not true. Second time
when I was called, my neighbor and man I worked with did it. His name is VESELIN
PETROVIé, and with him was GRUJO AMIDZié, whom I saw for the first time, and
whose name 1 found out later. They said that 1 wanted to take away from them their flat,
and they asked me who worked in headquarters, they said that I shot Serbs and the army,
although I told them that since November 19, 1991 there was no &rmy in Vukovar. They
beat me for 3 hours, with rubber sticks, fists and legs. There was a young man with me, and
they beat him too, because AMIDZié was his neighbor. I saw the results ofbeating when I
came back to my room and when I took off my clothes, I was black ali over the body, on! y
not over the head, although PETROVIé hit me over the fac~ severa! times. 1 bad an
operation on my hip in Vukovar, and because ofbeating in the bus, and on Mitnica, I vias
forced to have an operation on the left hip, as a matter of fact, they bad to make me a new
hip. I had that operation in Zagreb, on November 26, 1992, at Salata Clinic. I ·was
exchanged on March 27, 1992, as a member of the Croatian Anny, although I was not a
member, but they ordered me to say that because of the exchange. This is one part of
suffering we went through from Vukovar to freedom. I have said only a little part ofwhat I
went through, because people that were with me, and who st:!lyed there till September went
through even worst tortures. In my opinion it would be very good to hear everything from
me and the others, without adding or taking away anything, to hear the ttuth about us, the
ttuth about people we know nothing about, and among them is my son also, fighter from
Vukovar from the fust day, and to put the end ofthat. There is a suspicion that on occupied
territories are camps, that there are our people who have to work there or are taken to the
front figbting line, and also tbere is a suspicion ·about mass graves and murders after .
Vukovar fell.
With signature on every page of this testimony I confirm its authenticity, and that it was
giver witbout any coercion.
In Zagreb, Marcb 29, 1993
Statement was given by: Franjo Ko:Zul
Written testimony of Witness Franjo Kožul