A witness on Wednesday showed judges trying Radovan Karadzic for crimes against humanity the scars of a cross he said Serb captors carved into his chest under torture.

During cross-examination by Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic, who accused him of lying, Ahmet Zulic pulled open his shirt on the witness stand, pointed to his chest and told the bench: "Right here I have a cross carved in my skin.

Karadzic's genocide trial resumed on Tuesday after a six-week delay with the evidence of Zulic, the prosecution's first witness, in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Karadzic, 64, faces 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide charges arising from Bosnia's 1992-95 war in which 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million left homeless. He is acting as his own defence lawyer.

Zulic, now 62, claims he was taken prisoner in a Serb clampdown on his village in northwestern Bosnia in June 1992.

He was held by Serb forces for five months and was severely beaten, starved and forced to witness the executions of fellow detainees.

Answering Karadzic with his eyes downcast, Zulic told the court he had suffered permanent disabilities from having had seven vertebrae damaged, all his ribs fractured and a finger broken during the abuse.
He also had his teeth knocked out when Serb soldiers put a gun in his mouth at a prisoner execution scene.

"I have nightmares very often," the witness told the court. "I very frequently dream of people who were killed beside me or were dying beside me. I had one last night."

The prosecution's second witness, Sulejman Crncalo, wept as he told the court that his wife was killed in the shelling of the Markale market in Sarajevo in August 1995.

Searching for his wife, Crncalo stumbled upon the scene of the bombardment. "There was blood al over the place, flowing in the streets, bits of human flesh scattered around, bits of clothing torn and scattered all over," he told the judges, occasionally wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

A fence around the market, he said, "looked like it was painted red from the blood."

He later found his wife's body at a local morgue. "There was a woman lying next to my wife and her arm was thrown across my wife's body. I just cried."

Crncalo also testified that he was present when Karadzic made a speech in Pale, southeast of Sarajevo, in June 1992.

"Those were terrible words to our ears. He was saying to those present that every Muslim house had to be attacked because that's the way to defend Serb houses."

Karadzic started his cross-examination by telling the witness: "I would like to express my condolences for your loss".

(Source: AFA)