STATEMENT
1. My name is Jela Ugarkovic. I was born in the village of Komic, municipality of Titova
Korenica, Croatia. 1 now live in Denmark. I Ieft my family home in 1974 when I started
working in Zagreb, first at Unitas concern factory and later on at the ·company Rade Koncar,
as a financial officer. I was employed there until March 1991 when I was, along with
thousands of other people, laid off. At the outbreak of the conflict, in 1990-1991, there was a
growing tension between Serbs and Croats. I was the victim of certain provocations by Croats
in that period, but I never reacted to them and never had any problems.
2. In September 1991, I left Zagreb for a two-week visit to my parents in the village of
Komic to help them pickle food for the winter. My mother's spine·was in a very bad condition
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difficult for my father to work as one of his legs was shorter .than ·the other being disabled in
World War II. So, it was difficult for him to move. Komic is a village situated on a very rough
terrain, winters are extremely cold and the sail is barren. Bearing in mind that Komic was an
old village, with less and Jess people living in it, where it was very hard to live off land, my
parents sold out, a year before my visit, almost ail the cattle that used to be big in number
because it was predominantly a cattle-breeding region. As my brother, sister and I could not
visit them frequently, we told them to sell the majority of livestock, although it was hard for
them to accept it. Sorne bouses in the village bad electricity but ours did not. And there was
no phone in the village, either. For ali these reasons, I stayed with them because bad no heart
ta leave them like that. I started to work on the farm to make it a bit better. From thenon, I
was with my parents. So, I found myself in my native village of Komic when the operation
"Storm" was launched.
3. The village ofKomic was in the hintèrland and we experienced not much ofthe fighting or
shelling. But, the 1991-1995 conflict was a period particularly hard on us. The villagers had to
struggle to survive and make ends meet, on a daily basis. Males born after 1947 were called
up.
4. In the early morning on 4 August 1995, at about 4 a.m., my father woke me up and I could
hear shelling in. the distance. My father said that Croats were coming. I tried to calm him
saying that it was certainly our Army doing exercises. But, during the day I beard it on the
radio that the Croats began the attack, and I heard )udjman's speèch. He called on Serbs to
stay where they were and promised nothing would happen to us. Among the other reasons, I
stayed in the village because I believed in what he had said. So, I went on working around the
house but in the afternoon, wh en I came out to tender our cows, 1 saw a con voy of tractors
with farmers on the raad headed eastwards, towards the main raad and Ondico. The village of
. Komic had two roads, one was the Udbina-Gracac near Ondico to the west via Lastarica
Ieading to the centre of Komic and it was a macadam raad, and the ether was paved Ieading
from Udbina via Opalic to the village center. Houses and farms in Komic were scattered
along the raad and on the slopès of a hill to the south of the village.
5. 1 approached one of the tractors in the convoy asking what was going on and the driver told
me torun away as the Croatian forces were coming. l had dinner with my parents and we did
not talk much over it but we stayed on. Nevertheless, my father told me to sleep outside, and I
slept in a grave, because he was afraid something could happen to me, as he survived
previous wars. He wanted the Croatian soldiers not to find·me ifthey came to the house.
6. On the morning of Saturday 5 August, 1 woke up early again, and again I heard gunshots.
Around 5 o'clock in the moming I saw a neighbor from Place driving a tractor, who told me
he was leaving and I saw that he eut his animais loose and left them ali around. We Iistened to
the news on the radio by using transistors; neighbors use to gather around l p.m. to listen to
the news. The only news that we heard were from the Croatian battlefront; the news were of
Croatian victory with no !osses and the Serbs were told to stay.
7. That day our neighbor Petar Lavmic came and told us that he had been told by other
neighbors to evacuate my parents and me. But, even then we did not want to leave our house.
ln fact, my father said that I was young and that I should go, but I refused. A little after the
noon on that day, 5 August, almost ali remaining residents left the village. The vast majority
of the population, about 150 residents, left the village, and only elderly stayed behind. Then,
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of the village and I found only old and frail people who remained in their homes as, for
example, Petar who was 60 years old and his mother Sava, who was over 90. (1 think their last
name was Lavrnic or Momcilovic). I also found Stoja whoseîast namewas Ostojic, 1 think,
aged about 70. There were a few young people who remained behind, those who were looking
for their parents, like Radovan Diklic who was looking for his father and who told me that he
saw a few elderly women in their homes.
· 8. During that period, before the Croatian army entered our village, I remember hearing a
detonation, I think it was from a tank shell, and saw a house on fire in Ondice. Later on, as I
was passing by, I saw that the burnt-out building was a school.
9. The Croatian army entered the village on 12 August. I was in my garden and heard my dog
barking. And then 1 saw something in the distance. I hid and saon saw an approaching column
of soldiers in tanks, armored vehicles and a truck, with a lot of soldiers in the vehicles. They
wore dark green uniforms and as I recall had black berets on. I knew they were Croats
because the vehicles had checker-board license plates which were their symbols. The arrny
loept moving towards the village along the unpaved raad, and saon I saw a smoke coming
from a nearby ho use (later in the evening my dad said that it was the burnt-out ho use of Petar
Lavrnic and his mother Sava). It was the first house in the village. At the same time, I heard
the shooting in the village of Poljice as weil as loud explosions from the houses in the
neighborhood.
1 O. When the shooting stopped, I ran to fi nd my father. I stood at the edge of the forest and
near our house I saw soldiers, actually only their legs, because I hid myself very close by
among the trees. So 1 did not dare come any closer for fear they might see me. I saw the
soldiers descending downhill and surrounding our summer kitchen. The distance between the
slope at the edge of the forest where I was hidden and the summer kitchen was about 15
meters. By the way, my mother Marija was constantly lying in the summer kitchen bed-ridden,
where I fed her and changed her clothes.
The summer kitchen was built half of timber and half of stone, and was separated from
our main house, which was entirely stone built and was in the same yard. Two soldiers
entered the house from one side and two from the other. I fraze and hid among the trees.
They entered all the rooms and the big barn and hayloft. Shortly after, I heard a soldier say
"Guys, we've set everything on fire, let's go," and the soldiers left.
11. I waited a bit and then ran to our house, thinking that I could save my mother but it was
already tao late. The summer kitchen roof had caved in and totally collapsed. ln a matter of
seconds everything was a bali of tire as they torched ali the rooms. I heard the animais,
chickens and hens and a calf. I will never forget that moment.
12. I also saw a group of soldiers enter the house of my late uncle in the same manner; they
set tire to the house and the barn and headed towards Ondici. At one point, completely beside
myself, I came out into the open and shouted to the soldiers to kill me, as weil. I do not know
if they saw me; probably not. 1 think the same soldiers who burned clown our house were
those who had previously torched Poljice, because they came to our house through the woods
from that direction.
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farming was the source of incarne in the village, and that sorne families had up to 20 cows,
that scene was awful. There were a lot of dead horses and poultry. In the -evening as it grew
darker, 1 met with my father who was biding on the hill near the house. He just asked me if
my mother was burned to death, and we sat there ali night long.
14. My father asked me to go and see wh ether there was anyone left alive in Polj ice. We knew
that probably everyone who was found by Croatian soldiers was murdered. I said I would go
only to Tuk which was a hamlet near Poljice. There again, I saw that three who le estates were
flattened and I saw a pile of slain animais that were already bloated. When I came back I saw
Janja and Sotija Pavlica from Poljice with my father and Sotija had brought sorne food but 1
could not swallow a thing.
15. l think that Marinko Lavrnic reappeared at dusk on 13 August, who used to come
occasionally out of the forest where he was hiding. We agreed with the others who were still
alive that we would hide in the hills above our houses to avoid being killing. While Marinko
and 1 were hiding on a hill near the house of Stoja Ostojic, we saw people with dogs in the
valley and beard sorne shots but I do not know who these people were and whether anyone
was killed because I was far away. 1 think that on 13 August or thereabouts I went clown to
my ho use and in the summer kitchen I fou nd the remains of my mother. I was devastated and
screamed out of grief. I put her remains in a frying-pan and Marinko helped me dig a ho le in
the yard under a plum tree, and there 1 buried the remains of my mother and placed the pan on
top so that my brother and sisters could find it.
16. We spent the following day also in the wood. Actually, we were always outside because
we were afraid that the Croats might find us. Around 25 August, I decided to seek help from
the Czech UN troops who were stationed in Klapavica. I didn't walk through the front door
when I got to their base but I jumped over the wire fence and talked to the Czech soldiers.
Then, when they called their commander, I told him that there were around 20 people in the
woods, and so an evacuation was agreed for the next day. UNPROFOR soldiers found 18
people in my village and Poljice; I think it was the end of August.
17. The remains of my mother were buried by my sister and brother on 10 September 1995. r
know that Petar Lavrnic and his mother Sava Lavrnic were killed in the village of Komic. I
heard this from Dusanka Momcilovic who found their remains in front of their burnt-out
family home. Also, six months after the operation "Storm" I was on the crime scene with the
representatives of the Helsinki Committee and the corpses of Petar and Sava were stiJl
beneath their house. The two of them still had their clothes on and their bodies had not
completely decayed probably because of the cold winter conditions. Bath Petar and Sa va still
had their hands tied. Croatian police who saw that we came prevented us from burying them
and said they had to caU the investigatingjudge.
18. Mika Pavlica, who was disabled, was found in/or near the debris of ber bouse and her
house was burned dawn on 12 August, as Stoja Ostojic told me. I beard from Pero Mrkalj of
the Helsinki Committee that Staka Curcic was also found dead in the garden of her bouse and
that Barka Opacic, who was deaf-mute and for whom I know survived 12 August, when most
people were killed, has not been seen since September 1995.
19. In Poljice, Rade Sunajko was found dead at the doorstep of his birth bouse, and his wife
Mika Sunajko has not been seen since 12 August 1995, soI believe she was murdered then. l
- eard-fromLuka Pavhca from -PolJice that-Rade was 1 e an t atm e-gave- nrr urta -
himself. In the village of Komic which had 89 bouse numbers (my ho use number was 88 and
my uncle's No. 89), about 80 percent ofwhole estates were burned dawn, and particularly the
bouses that were not right next to the road but rather in the hill. As for the village o{Poljice
which is a small village with about sixty bouses, I think that 70 percent of estates were
· destroyed and burned.
20. I know for sure that there was no Serbian army in the villages ofKomic and in Poljice and
I also know that there was no one to defend or put up resistance to the Croatian army.
21. I gave a statement about these events in 1997 to the investigators of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but after that I did not testify at the trial of Ante
Gotovina, because they didn't cali me to the stand. I also gave a statement at the police station
in Titova Korenica immediately after the operation "Storm".
I have given this statement of my free will to the Serbian legal team before the International
Court of Justice and agree to appear in the proceedings before the Court as a witness. I have
read the statement and accept it entirely as my own.
In Fredericia, Den mark, on 8 March 2013
Signature:
Written testimony of Witness Jela Ugarkovič *