"They were sharpening knives in front of us"

I've been attending the trial of Marco Samardzija, an old man accused of orchestrating the massacre of 247 Bosnian Muslim men in the town of Biljani, a poor tiny hamlet in eastern Bosnia. Samardzija was the town's schoolteacher. The massacre happened in and around the town's school.

The trial began last week when Samardzija delivered a long, rambling opening statement, claiming he was the target of vicious slander, had no knowledge whatsoever of the killings, and had always fought for "Brotherhood and Unity," the old Titoist slogan of Communist Yugoslavia.

I thought he sounded convicing -- at the very least, he had convinced himself. But the past few days the witnesses have begun testifying. The testimony today of an old lady was particularly gripping. She came into the court hobbling on a cane, wearing a headshawl, a leopard-print shirt and a pink sweater vest. I reflexively found this comical at first, but I realized they were probably the nicest clothes she owned, and her testimony was anything but amusing. The defendant sat there taking notes. He looked up once, barely, at his old neighbor. Here is my rough record of part of the testimony, based on my notes:

PROSECUTOR: Did you know Marco Samardzija?
WITNESS: Of course, yes, I knew him, he was my neighbor. He taught my children, all of our children.
P: Tell me what happened on July 10, 1992.
W: We woke up to the sounds of shooting. I went to the door, and saw that there was a man killed outside. Then 2 soldiers came into our house and held guns and took us to the school. They herded us in, walked around us. It was raining a little bit. We stood there for a while... (screaming) They were sharpening knives in front of us! (crying) I saw my son... he was being pushed in and I cried out for him and then I fainted. (crying)
P: It's OK, take it slowly madam. What happened next?
W: My daughter was washing my face from the puddles on the ground, and they laughed and said "Don't bother washing her, we will bury her anyway." (...) After that, one soldier said that they shouldn't be holding women and children. So he let us go, and we went back to our house. We heard shooting for two hours after that.
P: Did you see Marco Samardzija that day?
W: Yes, we saw him outside the school. And then when I went back to my house, we saw him on an earth-mover machine, giving orders, telling his men to pick up the bodies.
P: Did you see him there when they were picking up the bodies?
W: Yes, he was there, putting them onto the truck. There was a stream of blood on the road. They killed people everywhere. There were bodies all around. Some they put on the truck were not even dead yet.
P: How did you find out that your son and husband had been killed?
W: Later someone gave me my son's ID, but they never told me what happened. Then when we found the bodies there was my husband's. There was a sweater over his face, covering his eyes, and when they pulled it back I saw his black hair and... (crying) I just knew it was him. (crying)
JUDGE: Let us stop this for now.
W: No, I can go on.
J: Are you sure you can do this?
W: No, not really.
J: If you can't, we won't go on.
W: (still crying) Please, do not delay this. I do not want to come here again.