"It was a bloodbath:" The 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre

‘Chaos, Carnage’: Official tells of Srebrenica horror

By Misha Savic
The Day, p. A3
15 April 1993.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — With deadly efficiency, Serb gunners blanketed the main street of Muslim-held Srebrenica with explosions designed to claim as many lives as possible, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

The barrage hit a school packed with refugees and a field where children were playing, he said.

“It was definitely calculated to launch a series of precise hits,” said Louis Gentile, an official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who returned from Srebrenica on Tuesday. “It was a bloodbath.”

Ghettos for Jews and Bosnian Muslims

Warsaw Ghetto (Jews) and Srebrenica Ghetto (Bosnian Muslims)

50 years of European progress:

Polish Jews: In 1943, some 400,000 Jewish people were rounded up and herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. German Nazis starved them and murdered many of them – just because they were Jewish.

Bosnian Muslims: In 1993, some 80,000 Bosnian Muslims were herded into the enclave of Srebrenica. Serbs starved the Bosniak civilians, tortured them, terrorized them, and attacked them on a daily basis from nearby Serb village – just because they were Muslims.

It was genocide: In 1993, two years before the Srebrenica massacre, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 819, adopted unanimously on April 16, 1993, Resolution 819 describing the situation in Srebrenica as a “slow-motion proces of genocide.” With the fall of the enclave two years later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice ruled it was Genocide.

Serbs massacre 12, maim 15 women, children and elderly lined up for Sarajevo water

“The Serbs just lure us out of our homes by cutting off the water supplies so they can massacre us… I saw it, heads and limbs flew everywhere. I’ve never seen anything so awful.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p.A3.
13 July 1993.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (REUTERS) — Serb forces besieging the Bosnian capital lobbed amortar shell onto a group of people lining up for water at a garden pump yesterday, killing 12 and wounding 15, hospital and police officials said.

“The Serbs just lure us out of our homes by cutting off the water supplies so they can massacre us,” sobbed Dervisa Fazlic as doctors dressed a wound in her arm.

“This is our reality. This i not life. But what can be done?” said Visnja Tufekdzic as she grimly cleaned and wrapped the body of two friends, a mother and teen-age daughter, in a cement shack serving as a makeshift morgue.

The afternoon attack, unreported for two hours because a power blackout cut Sarajevo’s phone lines, was the latest episode in a Serb reign of terror in the Bosnian capital.

Second Sarajevo breadline massacre, Serb attack kills 15, injured 30

By John Pomfret
The Daily Gazette
31 August 1992, p.A1,A3

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — A howitzer shell crashed into a crowded marketplace Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens in one of the bloodiest single attacks during the Serbs’ siege of Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, fierce fighting around Gorazde forced U.N. officials to delay plans to dispatch an aid convoy.

Serbs announced Saturday they were lifting their five-month siege of the city southeast of Sarajevo.

“It appears to be extremely dangerous,” said Fred Eckhard, chief spokesman for U.N. operations in former Yugoslavia. He said the convoy might leave on Wednesday.

Gorazde, as the lone government holdout against Serb insurgents in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been an emotional symbol of the war that began when the majority Bosniaks and Croat voted for independence from Yugoslavia on Feb. 29. As many as 100,000 people have been trapped there.

TV propaganda distorts view of Serb populace toward foes

The Spokesman-Review
15 June 1992.

By Mary Beth Sheridan

NIS, Yugoslavia — Factory worker Miroslav Ivanovic has a ready explanation for why Serb forces have been battling so fiercely in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“The enemy cuts throats. They massacre little children,” the 35-year-old worker said earnestly. “They cut out Serbs’ hearts and kidneys then sell them in Germany,” added his colleague, Zoran Pavlovic.

Asked where they had heard such outrageous reports, the men responded: “Television.”

Concentration Camp Survivors in Bosnia Detail Executions

Model of Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia used in the court proceedings by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Reading Eagle, page A16.
5 August 1992.

By Ron Gutman

ZAGREB, Croatia – Serbian guards at the Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia daily executed Bosniak and Croat prisoners from the thousands being held in at least three locations in the sprawling former mining complex, according to an interview conducted by Newsday Tuesday.

Guards selected seven or eight victims at random each night using a flashlight in a darkened warehouse where 600 to 700 prisoners were packed together, according to a 53-year-old Muslim camp survivor, who asked to be identified only as “Hujca.”

More Children Killed in the Besieged Sarajevo, Another Miserable Day in Bosnia

A funeral, a hospital – another miserable day in Sarajevo

By John Daniszewski
The Item, 12 October 1992.
Page 2A

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – No one at the Children’s Surgery Clinic had the hard to tell Darko Vapetic that his parents wouldn’t be coming.

The eight-year-old boy, lying in a hospital cot after surgery for shrapnel wounds, was calling for his parents. The same Serbian shelling that almost took off Darko’s leg had also killed his parents.

Across town on Sunday, the Islamic faithful buried one of Bosnia’s senior Muslim religious leaders, a 32-year-old imam struck down in the doorway of his house by another shell.

It was a typically miserable day in Sarajevo.

15 Children A Day Are Dying in the Besieged Gorazde, eastern Bosnia

Serbs Begin Major Assault

The Times-News
12 July 1992.
By John Burns

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovima — Four days after the leaders of seven major industrial democracies demanded an end to Serbian military offensives in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian nationalist forces on Saturday began a major assault on the last big Muslim-controlled town in eastern Bosnia.

The attack by the Serbs on Gorazde, about 70 miles east of Sarajevo, threw the Bosnian government into further desperation.

President Alija Izetbegovic, returning here on Saturday afternoon aboard a Western relief flight from a meeting on Thursday with President Bush in Helsinki, was greeted by angry demands from Bosniak fighters that he release scarce stocks on ammunition for an attempt to break through to Gorazde.

With the capture of Gorazde, where 50,000 people are under siege, Serbian forces would be freed to concentrate attacks here on Sarajevo, the capital. Bosnian government force in Sarajevo are being weakened daily by diminishing supplies of ammunition in their attempt to withstand shelling and the Serbian siege.

Serbian Army Kills Bosniak & Serb Children, Sarajevo Orphanage

Serbs bombard funeral to Bosniak (Muslim) and Serb (Christian) children

PHOTO: Moments after Svjetlana Glavas, below, buried her 2-year-old daughter, Vedrana, on Tuesday, shells landed in a Sarajevo cemetery and wounded her mother, Ruza Glavas, above. The 2-year-old girl was killed Saturday in a Serbian attack on a bus carrying orphans and other children from the besieged Sarajevo.

Serbian Shells Shatter Funeral

Herald-Journal, p.A3
4 August 1992.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Four shells thumped into a cemetery Tuesday just after mourning relatives and orphans buried two children killed by Serbian sniper fire that hit a bus carrying them away from the bombed-out capital.

The mortar attack, apparently intentional, came as U.N. officials announced they were suspending aid airlifts to Sarajevo for three days because the intensity of fighting made it unsafe for planes to land.

The bodies of Vedrana Glavas [Serb girl], a mentally retarded 2-year-old, and 1-year-old Roki Sulejmanovic [Bosniak boy] had just been placed side by side in the earth by a battered statue of a lion, Bosnia’s symbol, when three shells exploded.

The deafening silence: A Diet of Serbian Imperialism

By Linda Paric
Green Left, Issue #56.
20 May 1992.

On Mother’s Day 1992, my village died. It was killed by Serbian mortars, guns and bombs. It never made the news, just like dozens of Croatian and Muslim villages and towns in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. It is another Vukovar, Osijek, Mostar, Sarajevo, Ravno, Foca, Visegrad, Vinkovci, Skabrnje, Bijelina, Dalj, Ulice …

Gorice, in north-east Bosnia, had survived 500 years of Turkish occupation, the poverty created by its Serbian landlords since 1914, two world wars and postwar illness and famine.

Like most Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I grew up on a diet of Serbian imperialism. They were the police, the public servants, the bureaucrats, the politicians and the teachers. Like my brothers before me, I had a Serbian teacher, even though we were all Croatian. He taught us Serbian, under the guise of Serbo-Croat, and gave extra marks if we wrote in Cyrillic script.

Even this was not enough. Only the total destruction of anything that is not Serbian will now satisfy.

World Looked Away, While Serbs Mutilated Bosniaks in Camps

Photo: Notorious Ciglana concentration camp near Zvornik. Čelopek, Ekonomija and Ciglana were three camps in which Serbs tortured and then mutilated Bosniak civilians in the municipality of Zvornik, eastern Bosnia (near Srebrenica). They cut Muslim ears, noses, and genitalia. Prisoners died in excruciating pain. Darko Janković (aka: 'Pufta') - from Kraljevo, Serbia - was particularly brutal. He was a collector of Muslim eyes, noses and ears; he took sadistic pleasure in butchering of Bosniak civilians. Photo credits: Hague Tribunal.

“The Serbs are taking out Muslims’ eyes, cutting off their fingers, ears, noses, cutting their bodies step by step and putting salt on their wounds, scarring their foreheads and backs or cheeks with Orthodox crosses and cutting off women’s breasts…”

Calling Attention to the Slaughter

By Nahid Khan
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
13 November 1992.

PULLMAN — Abdullah Hodzic was formerly the chief imam, or Muslim religious leader, of Zvornik, a Bosnian province [municipality] bordering Serbia.

That is, until the Serb army destroyed his mosque, burned all the books of his library and killed or drove out all the Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks] from the area.

President Alija Izetbegovic, "Sarajevo Shall Survive"

“One victims remained alive for several minutes after both legs were cut off by a falling wall. His screams faded into deathly quiet, perspiration covering his face and he was dead by the time he was taken to hospital…”

46 killed, 303 wounded in 24 hours

The Press-Courier
24 August 1992

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The capital’s defenders suffered heavy casualties in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to gain ground before peace talks begin. Bosnia’s president vowed that “Sarajevo shall survive.”

President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters Sunday that his forces had made headway on the west side of the city, where they were trying to reach Sarajevo’s airport, now under U.N. control. But government military officials gave mixed signals.

Israel Arrests Bosnian Genocide Suspect Aleksandar Cvetkovic

Jerusalem Post
18 January 2011.
[re-published with permission]

ISRAEL — Alexandar Cvetkovic [Alexander Cvetkovic] is suspected of involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during which Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were murdered in eastern Bosnia.

The International Investigation Unit arrested on Tuesday Alexandar Cvetkovic supected of involvement in the 1995 genocide in Bosnia.

Immediately following his arrest, the International Affairs Department of the State Prosecutor’s Office filed a petition to the Jerusalem District Court for extradition to Bosnia-Herzegovina where he is sought for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The prosecution also requested to keep him detained until a ruling on the extradition process is made.

Toll-Free Line to Report Suspected Serb war criminals living in the United States

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) encourages the public to come forward with any information they may have regarding suspected Serbian and Bosnian Serb war criminals who participated in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Nationwide, anonymous tips may be reported at 1-866-347-2423.

Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers removed Branko Popic, who served in the army of the breakaway Republic of Srpska during the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Today, ICE deported 62-year-old Serbian war criminal Branko Popic to Bosnia. Popic was turned over to the custody of Bosnian authorities at Sarajevo International Airport in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is another example of how ICE will not allow the United States to be a safe haven for those who have come to our country in an effort to evade prosecution and punishment for the crime of genocide.

Photographic Evidence of the Suha massacre, Bosnian Genocide

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Remains of a baby bottle and baby clothing with a bullet hole were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population of the Podrinje region (eastern Bosnia).

The following is forensic photo evidence of the Suha massacre, which occurred on 10 May 1992, more than three years before the Srebrenica genocide. Suha in the nearby Bratunac municipality, on the outskirts of the Srebrenica district. On 10 May 1992, Serb soldiers slaughtered around 38 Bosniak women, children, sick and the elderly in the village. There was also one pregnant woman whose baby fetus was clearly visible…

All photos © Human Rights NGO Truth for Justice (www.ispa.ba); Photographer: Almir Arnaut; Used with Permission; Photos archived by http://www.Genocid.org project. Forensic evidence collected by the U.N. war crimes investigators. The remains of victims analyzed by the Department of Pathology at the University Clinical Center Tuzla. Click photos for higher resolution.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Remains of a baby bottle and baby clothing with a bullet hole were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Remains of a baby bottle and baby clothing containing multiple bullet holes were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosniak population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide, when Serbs overtook Srebrenica summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Pathologist at the University Clinical Center Tuzla inspects remains of unborn Bosniak baby that was found in a womb of a murdered mother. The victims' remains were excavated from the mass grave Suha in Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of a Bosniak woman and her unborn baby excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. Baby's undeveloped body was preserved in mother's womb. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Pathologists at the University Clinical Center Tuzla show remains of a pregnant Bosniak woman and her unborn baby. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide, when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of a pregnant Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) woman and her unborn baby excavated from the mass grave Suha in Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. Baby's undeveloped head, fingers, and legs are clearly visible. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Pathologists at the University Clinical Center Tuzla examine remains of a pregnant Bosniak woman and her unborn baby found in mother's womb. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The victims were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosnian Muslim population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of a pregnant Bosniak woman, ZEKIRA BEGIC (maiden: Hrustenbasic), and her unborn baby excavated from a mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. Fetus body was preserved in mother's womb with tiny legs and undeveloped brain clearly visible. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. In the neighbouring municipality of Visegrad, Serbs also barricaded at least 150 Bosnian Muslim women, children, and elderly men in two abandoned houses and then burned them alive. Zehra Turjacanin recently she testified 'what it feels like to burn alive.'

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of Bosniak children killed by Serbs around Srebrenica. The victims' remains were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosniak population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity had culminated in a crime of genocide, when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) child and a baby killed by Serbs around Srebrenica. The victims' remains were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosniak population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) -- Remains of Bosniak children killed by Serbs around Srebrenica. The victims' remains were excavated from the mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. The massacre was committed by Serbs around Srebrenica in 1992, more than 3 years before the Srebrenica genocide. The mass grave Suha contained bodies of 30 Bosniak women and 8 children with the youngest child being 2 years old. The events preceding and leading to the Srebrenica genocide included unprecedented levels of cruelty committed by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica against the civilian Bosniak population of the Podrinje. In July 1995, crimes against humanity culminated in a crime of genocide when Serbs overtook Srebrenica, summarily executed between 8,372 and 10,000 Bosniaks (men, children, and elderly), and forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees in a U.N.-assisted case of ethnic cleansing.

Tears for Kids, the 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre

(Photos courtesy: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., from video testimony about the 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre)

The Srebrenica Children Massacre refers to the killing of as many as 62 children among the victims when the elementary school in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, was shelled by the Army of Republika Srpska in April 1993.

The Srebrenica Children Massacre occurred two years before the Srebrenica genocide.

On 12 April 1993, the Bosnian Serbs told the UNHCR representatives that they would attack the town of Srebrenica within two days unless the Bosniaks surrendered. The same day, Serbs attacked Srebrenica’s elementary school, killing 62 Bosniak children and wounding 152 others.

Bosnian Genocide (1993) -- Srebrenica Children Massacre, April 1993. Photo courtesy: The USHMM, video screenshots.

According to evidence given to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia by Sead Bekric, one of the survivors, describing how he was blinded at the age of 14, “There was a soccer field in Srebrenica on April 12th 1993 and there was a massive amount of people and we had a match and there was a shelling from Zvijezda, from the hill above Bratunac and the soccer field was shelled and I was blinded, together with 62 other people killed on the soccer field. … My understanding there was about 60, 62 people killed on that day and there was over 100 wounded on that day.”

Bosnian Genocide (1993) -- Srebrenica Children Massacre in April 1993. Video screenshot courtesy of CNN.

Survivors were treated by Dr Nedret Mujkanovic, who in an interview with Chuck Sudetic described how people were sitting around in front of the refugee-packed school and children were playing football and other games. “In less than one minute, seven rockets from a multiple-rocket launcher fell in an area about half the size of a football field.”

Srebrenica Children Massacre (Bosnian Genocide) in 1993

Dr. Mujkanovic told Sudetic that 36 people had died immediately and 102 had been seriously wounded. He said that the Serbs knew there was a camp of refugees from Cerska and Konjevic Polje in the school. “They directed their fire at that location. It came completely by surprise. There were pieces of women scattered about, and you could not see how to fit them together. I saw one dead mother lying on the ground and holding the hands of her two dead children. They all had no heads.”

Photo of Sead Bekric, child victim of the 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre. Shrapnel from a mortar had swept away this boy's eyes and blinded him, part of his skull was also crushed. Credits: James Mason

Dr Mujkanovic subsequently gave evidence to the ICTY about the shelling on 12 April. Srebrenica was under general attack. After the fall of Cerska and Konjevic Polje, their population of 15,000 or more had fled to Srebrenica and were accommodated in the primary and secondary schools in Srebrenica and even on the streets. When the school was shelled over 100 people were killed and approximately the same number seriously injured, including lots of women, lots of children and some men. Dr Mujkanovic also told the Tribunal how the evacuation of the injured had been shelled by the Serbs.

There is some confusion about the final number of the dead. No formal investigation was conducted as far as Sead Bekric’s evidence to the ICTY indicates.

Footage from ABC reporting from Srebrenica by Tony Birtley.

The massacre and the injured Sead Bekric were seen as emblematic of the fate of the child victims of the violent war of ethnic cleansing unleashed in Bosnia. Sead’s face was shown around the world by CNN television. The cover of the 10 May 1993 edition of Newsweek magazine printed one large, self-explanatory word across Sead’s injured chest: “Bosnia.”

This massacre occurred immediately before the United Nations declared Srebrenica a “safe haven”, and more than two years before the Srebrenica genocide.

The massacre is also mentioned in Emir Suljagic’s personal account of the siege and fall of Srebrenica, “Postcards from the Grave”.

Aftermath of the Bosnian Genocide: In the Land of War Criminals

Photo Credits: 21-year-old Edna Dautovic was one of many Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) women who were tortured, brutally raped, and then killed by the Serbs in the Omarska concentration camp near Prijedor. Pre-war photo of Edna Dautovic courtesy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“The men pointed at a passing dog and ordered Ranko to shoot it, which he did. As the dog lay dying, they screamed at Ranko, asking him if he was a good Serb and telling him that if he could shoot a dog, then he could shoot a Muslim. Yes, yes, he was a good Serb. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.”

Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) Civilians in Omarska Concentration Camp 1992 (A). Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

By Gordon Weiss
Jan 6, 1997.
Journalist’s account

PRIJEDOR, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA — ”They eat pig or they get the f— out,” Ranko, 20, says of his former Muslim [Bosniak] neighbors and friends in this northern Bosnian town.

Ranko is a nice guy. Good-looking, with a raffish sense of humor and a fluent rap-like English lapped up from the cinema and the meager offerings of Republika Srpska television, he translates for me the lyrics of a Croatian rock band, Atomic Shelter, blaring from the loudspeakers.

Nix, 21, is quieter. “The Thinker,” his friends call him. He’s a writer, a poet, and as militantly Serbian as Ranko, though late at night and drunk, he whisperingly confesses: “My legs carry my dead soul, man; I am empty; I feel nothing. Do you understand me?”

Over beer and marijuana at the Ars Media bar in town, Ranko, Nix and other demobbed soldiers from the Bosnian Serbian army — they call themselves “The Street Dogs” — espouse in no particular order Stalinism, anarchism, nihilism, punk, metal, genocide, fascism, freedom of the press, love for mother Serbia and undying devotion for Ratko Mladic, the notorious Bosnian Serbian military leader and indicted war criminal. “Mladic, he’s our man, our main man; he’s a f—— hero and we would all die for him,” says Ranko.

And they never forget Prijedor’s “Silent Night.”

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Bosnian Muslim Civilians in Omarska Concentration Camp 1992. Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Prijedor is a town of about 100,000 people in the center of a mining, forestry and agricultural district, nominally in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but to the Serbian residents, a proud component of the self-proclaimed statelet Republika Srpska. “Cleansed” of its Muslim population, Prijedor is also home to an estimated one-third of those indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” committed in Bosnia’s civil war.

Many of those crimes were committed in these parts, beginning on a spring night in 1992.

The way Ranko and the others tell it, there was a list circulating through town, ominously entitled “The Silent Night.” It supposedly listed the names of Serbian intellectuals, political leaders and community figures targeted by militant Muslim outsiders who had come to Prijedor to raise the town’s 70 percent Muslim majority against its Serbian minority. The threatened Serbs, goes the story, struck first.

Documents issued by The Hague tribunal give a succinct and somewhat less mythological account of what happened next:

Bosnian Genocide (1992), Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) prisoner in Omarska concentration camp near Prijedor.

“About 23 May 1992, approximately three weeks after Serbs forcibly took control of government authority in Opstina [district] Prijedor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, intensive shelling by Serb forces of Bosnian Muslim and Croat areas in Prijedor caused Muslim and Croat residents to flee their homes. The majority of them were seized by the Serb forces … [who] shot or beat them on the spot … the Serb forces began taking prisoners to the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje camps.”

In the camps inmates were gang raped; they were stabbed and mutilated; they were starved; they were sexually assaulted in front of their families and forced to perform fellatio on one another; some were shot. But mostly they were slowly, mercilessly beaten to death with boots, fists, shovels, baseball bats or any instrument that came to hand. Some of those indicted were listed as “visitors” to the camps.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Bosnian Muslim Civilians in Omarska Concentration Camp 1992 during a staged lunch. Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Armed with an official “Wanted” poster, I drove the 300 kilometers from Sarajevo to Prijedor. It was early winter, and smoke was drawing from the chimneys in the Serbian villages I passed. Nothing was alive in what were once Muslim villages, only the skulls of torched homes, their roofs, windows and door frames burned out completely.

Bosnian Genocide (1992), Penny Marshall, ITN, 6 August 1992 shakes hand with Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) prisoner Fikret Alic, Trnopolje concentration camp.

Finding the former camps is not difficult. There are signposts and billboards all along the 50-kilometer drive between the Bosnian provincial capital of Banja Luka and Prijedor. One of the camps, Keraterm, on the edge of Prijedor, is operating again, as a tile factory. Trnopolje, a village lying halfway between Prijedor and the Omarska concentration camp — labeled a “death camp” by the Hague tribunal — advertises guest houses.

Bosnian Genocide (1992), Armed guards oversee staged lunch at Omarska concentration camp. Ian Williams, ITN, 6 August 1992

The camps, linked to nearby residential areas by narrow-gauge railway lines, are remarkable only for their offensive blandness. The older villagers are gruff. To a visitor they claim to know nothing, except for the sowing of fields and the cutting of timber. In Prijedor, there is a mixture of fear, conspiracy and defiant pride. “What you have to understand is that these so-called war criminals are heroes up here,” says an ex-opera singer from Sarajevo, playing “Killing Me Softly” on a Hammond organ at the AeroClub in Prijedor. “If you are going to indict one person, you have to indict everybody, because everybody participated.”

Bosnian Genocide (1992), Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) prisoner Fikret Alic in Trnopolje concentration camp

The Aeroclub is owned by Simo Drljaca, the former police chief of Prijedor, described by a spokesman for The Hague tribunal as a man “accused by every major human rights organization of massive human rights violations,” from the beginning of the ethnic cleansing in May 1992 until September 1996, when he was forced to resign at the insistence of IFOR, the Nato-led ground forces. Drljaca once famously remarked to a British journalist during a tour of the Omarska concentration camp in August 1992 that “Muslims are usually very skinny because they don’t eat pork — have you read the Koran?”

Drljaca remains free, though he is expected to be included in the next list of indictments to be issued this month. Meanwhile, he works for the Republika Srpska Ministry of the Interior and owns and runs a successful transportation business in Prijedor. The locals call him “Mr. Ten Percent.” I find his office easily enough but a bodyguard acidly declines my request for an interview and advises me not to come again.

Bosnian Genocide (1992) - Bosnian Muslim Civilians in Omarska Concentration Camp 1992 during a staged lunch. Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

On May 11, 1992, the roundup began. Ranko passed through the streets of Prijedor as Muslims and Croats were dragged from their houses and shot, or beaten, and loaded into yellow and blue vans for transportation to the camps. Only 16 years old, he had already volunteered for the militia. A couple of men he knew were dragging an old Muslim man from his house. They grabbed Ranko and thrust a pistol into his hand, telling him to shoot the old man.

“My hands were shaking, I looked at him and pointed the gun but I couldn’t shoot. He reminded me of my father. He was saying, ‘Don’t do it, son, don’t do it.’ He was kneeling in the gutter outside his house. Then his wife came down the stairs screaming and crying, and they shot her in the eye. She fell back inside her home. The old man stopped pleading, and began crying, just crying then.”

The men pointed at a passing dog and ordered Ranko to shoot it, which he did. As the dog lay dying, they screamed at Ranko, asking him if he was a good Serb and telling him that if he could shoot a dog, then he could shoot a Muslim. Yes, yes, he was a good Serb. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Ranko’s customary bravado evaporates as he recounts the one second it took him to kill his first man. He saw at least 50 murdered bodies in the streets that day.

Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia, 1992

The Sensei Bar in Kozarac, a small, devastated village a couple of kilometers from Prijedor, is owned by Dusan Tadic, who has the dubious honor to be the first man tried by the war crimes tribunal.

Tadic was a guard at the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, where, according to the war crimes indictment, he raped women, beat and shot some prisoners to death and forced others to drink from puddles and crawl over broken glass, while jumping on them until they could not move. Then he emptied a fire extinguisher into their mouths as they lay prone. To his kid brother, Mladen, who now runs the Sensei Bar, “Dusan is a great guy … he actually saved a lot of Muslims … wouldn’t hurt a fly… it’s a case of mistaken identity … he didn’t even know how to use a gun.” Goran Borovnica, also from Kozarac, is on the wanted list, but has disappeared. Friends think he died fighting on the central Bosnia front during the war. He is accused of hauling out Muslim prisoners as they were being marched to the camps and shooting them on the spot. Goran was also “a great guy,” says Mladen, “but very, very violent when drunk.”

Goran’s two sisters and mother live in a pitifully small house that used to belong to Muslims. Lubica, his mother, alternately weeps and screams obscenities about her former Muslim neighbors. “He was a lovely man, and wouldn’t hurt a mouse,” she says. “If there were more people like my brother and Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, this war would never have happened,” says Goran’s sister, Branka, 38, pulling on a Vek cigarette. She kisses the images of Mladic and Karadzic on the wanted posters. “It was a normal war here — and the Muslims shot at their own houses.”

Bosnian Genocide (1992), Omarska concentration camp prisoners at staged lunch. Penny Marshall, ITN, 6 August 1992.

If that’s true, the Muslims did a brutally efficient job. Kozarac is a ghost village, leveled, burned and empty. Scattered teapots and pans, lumps of melted glass, torn clothing, a dog carcass and charred bits of washing machines and stoves litter the streets and muddy lanes where 6,000 houses once stood.

IFOR wanted posters are sometimes quaintly accurate. One simply goes to 31 Cirkin Polje Street, Prijedor, as noted in one of the posters, and there you find Predrag Banovic — and if you’re very lucky his twin brother, Nendad. Both of them are accused of torturing and beating to death civilian prisoners. The Banovics still work for the reserve police, a couple of local policemen tell me. They share a red motorbike and can often be seen riding through town, a couple of kilometers from the Keraterm concentration camp, where among other things, Predrag forced one man to bite off another’s testicles.

I drove to their house on a narrow fruit tree-lined lane at the edge of Prijedor. Some lights were on, and through the latticed window I recognized Predrag, his black hair in a pony tail, kneeling on the bare wooden floor, counting freshly harvested apples. His father, Svetko Banovic, was entering the figures in a book. I pushed the door open and stepped into the room. “IFOR!” Predrag whispered, thinking I was a military investigator who would arrest him. He hid his face with his hands and ran from the room as his father confronted me and forced me out. Mr. Banovic said that the man was a worker and that he hadn’t seen his son for three years.

Bosnian Genocide, 1992 -- Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Omarska concentration camp (1992) near Prijedor

Suzana, Ranko’s girlfriend, is angry and sick of the questions. It’s late at night and we are at an impromptu birthday party for their friend, Momo. Momo and others are imbibing marijuana and rejki (the local turpentine). There’s singing, laughter and a vague sensation that something could always turn nasty. Ranko tells us about a very funny night when they all got so drunk that “we beat the shit out of one another.” “Why don’t you write about what the Muslims did to us?” demands Suzana. “Show what they did here.” What did they do? I ask. “They did nothing, because we got in first,” says Ranko. “But they wanted to. We were smarter and faster.”

They tell me again about “The Silent Night.”

“No, I never saw the list, but I know that it existed because my uncle’s name was on it,” says Ranko. “Hey,” says Nix, whispering to me out of earshot. “This was their city, the Muslims.” His eyes are wide. “No one will tell you what happened, because they’re too f—— scared.” The worst “atrocity” they can offer me is a cemetery for the Serbian war dead. “You will see it full of mothers crying for their sons and it will break your heart,” Ranko assures me.

The dull red buildings of the former Omarska concentration camp are perched on the edge of the village of Omarska, seven kilometers from Prijedor. People could wash their dishes and watch the beatings and shootings from their kitchen window. A small red brick building in the center of the compound, now covered with a snowy fringe, was known as “The Red Building.” Prisoners were taken there for “special treatment,” which they almost never survived.

I’m looking for Zeljko Meakic, the former camp commander at Omarska, where up to 3,000 inmates were incarcerated, tortured or killed. Despite assurances from the Republika Srbska Minister of the Interior that Meakic has since been removed as deputy chief of the Omarska police, local villagers tell me that, yes, every morning “the commander,” as they call him, still leaves for work at the Omarska police station.

It is freezing and snowing as night falls. I have been searching for Meakic’s house for nearly two hours, getting conflicting directions. I stop in a tiny, isolated bar and ask the barmaid if she knows where Meakic lives. She says she’s never heard of him, but a few minutes later, as I’m drinking coffee, I hear her describing my car over the telephone.

In late August 1992, Ranko had a friend over for a few drinks. His friend belonged to a military demolition team that had received orders that night to blow up a mosque in central Prijedor. Ranko’s friend invited him to go with the team, about a dozen boys. At around midnight they set off for the Muslim temple, which Ranko tells me, “was about 200 years old. I don’t know, they all look the same — cheap.” They battered the door down and began smashing up the mosque, downing more rejki as they looted and destroyed. One of the boys started playing Iron Maiden and Nirvana over the loudspeakers that had once broadcast the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Then they lit a bonfire of carpets and tables in the middle of the mosque and bored holes in the walls by the light of the fire. They wired up the charges, dismantled and took the sound system and gathered outside to watch the walls crumble in a single cloudy explosion, singing and laughing. I asked Ranko if he felt ashamed. “Why? I did two djamijas [mosques] the same way. If you destroy their djamijas, they never come back.” I’m curious, then, as to why the mosques I pass are all destroyed, while the Muslim graveyards abutting them are left conspicuously untouched. One man I ask, a farmer in a field, replies, “not enough bulldozers,” but Suzana’s answer is different. “Disrupting the dead. It brings bad luck.”

One night, drunk and stoned, and by way of explanation for all the questions that I have asked, Nix replies in song: I used to love her
But I have to kill her
She feels so much
She drove me nuts
She’s buried right in my backyard
I know I miss her
So I have to kill her
She’s buried six feet under
And I can still hear her complain

“Guns ‘n’ Roses,” he says, as if that says it all.

The head spins with the myths and imperatives that pervade all Balkan conversations, the memories of past wrongs crying to be righted. “The Silent Night,” Muslims who “breed like rabbits,” the dispossessed Serbs who had “once owned all the land,” the mythical caches of arms in every Muslim household, the frontier between Turkey and Europe, manned by the innocent, vigilant Serbs, the plans by Bosnian President Alia Izetbegovic to create a fundamentalist Islamic state where every Serbian maiden would be forced to wear the chador. Beyond Prijedor, the process muddles on. While The Hague tribunal calls repeatedly for the arrest of the indicted, IFOR officials argue that they have no mandate to arrest. The government of the Republika Srpska maintains that there are no war criminals on its territory (it refuses to recognize the legality of the indictments), therefore it has no obligation under international law to arrest anyone.

In Prijedor, the Street Dogs yell “sex and violence” like baying wolves, screaming at the empty streets and darkened roofs, sending a chill across the town’s already frigid air. They have rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and plastic explosives in their bedrooms. Ranko’s cupboard has an arsenal where other kids might store their tennis rackets. Still, for all their bravado and defiance, psychic hounds are snapping at their own heels.

“You see,” says Nix, with a slow, sweet smile revealing tombstone teeth that belie his tender years, “you despise us. But you cannot despise us more than we despise ourselves.”

Bosniaks in Croat-run Dretelj camp near Čapljina

Bosnian Croat authorities and forces, established, supported and operated a system of ill-treatment, involving a network of prisons, concentration camps and other detention facilities (including, without limitation, the Heliodrom Camp, Ljubuski Prison, Dretelj Prison, Gabela Prison and Vojno Camp) to arrest, detain and imprison thousands of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), including women, children and elderly. Many of the imprisoned and detained Bosniaks were kept in horrible conditions and deprived of basic human necessities, such as adequate food, water and medical care. Many suffered inhumane treatment and physical and psychological abuse, including beatings and sexual assaults.

The Siege of Mostar in 1993 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnian Genocide (1993) - Siege of Mostar in 1993

Mostar was surrounded by the Croat forces for nine months, and much of its historic city was severely damaged in shelling including the famous Stari Most bridge.

Mostar was divided into a Western part, which was dominated by the Croat forces and an Eastern part where the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was largely concentrated. However, the Bosnian Army had its headquarters in West Mostar in the basement of a building complex referred to as Vranica. In the early hours of May 9, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) attacked Mostar using artillery, mortars, heavy weapons and small arms. The HVO controlled all roads leading into Mostar and international organisations were denied access. Radio Mostar announced that all Bosniaks should hang out a white flag from their windows.

With Friends like Croats, Bosniaks Don't Need Enemies

“Let’s Kill All the Muslims”

Newsweek
7 June 1993.

On a recent night, soldiers from the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) forced Zurjeta Tarevljak, her three children and a dozen of their Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) neighbors from their apartments in Mostar, a town in southern Bosnia. “Let’s kill all the Muslims,” the soldiers began yelling as the people huddled in a sandlot. “The children were screaming, ‘Don’t shoot us, please don’t kill us’,” Mrs. Tarevljak says. An HVO officer stopped his men from carrying out the threat, but the Bosniaks’ relief was short-lived. Instead, the soldiers herded the families into the street, where Bosniak forces were counterattacking-and made the civilians serve as a human shield. “Go out there so your own people can shoot you,” said one HVO soldier.

Vitez massacres in Central Bosnia claim lives of 172 Bosniaks

Bosnian Genocide (1993) Bosnian Genocide (1993) Photograph of trenching area on the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) side of Stari Vitez. Photo: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

In the early morning of April 16, 1993 at about 5:45 to 6:00 a.m. Bosniak areas of Vitez and Krušćica were attacked by Croat artillery, which increased during the morning and included mortar fire of various calibre.

It was the first coordinated offensive in the area with attacks happening simultaneously up and down the valley.

According to professional military opinion of a British colonel, the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) had been taken by surprise. Croatian Defence Council (HVO) soldiers in camouflage uniforms entered the streets of Vitez, arresting Bosniaks and killing them in their apartments.

Busovaca massacre in Central Bosnia claims lives of 43 Bosniaks

Bosnian Genocide (1993) - Photograph of the elevated area and the road from Travnik to Busovaca going in that direction. The entrance near the British battalion camp. Photo courtesy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

On the morning of January 25, 1993, Croat forces attacked the Bosniak part of the town of Busovača called Kadića Strana following the January 20 ultimatum. Busovaca is located in central Bosnia, near Zenica.

The attack included shelling from the surrounding hills and a loudspeaker called on Bosniaks to surrender.

Zenica massacre claims 65 casualties in Croat attack

The Zenica massacre shows dead bodies. In the Croat shelling of Zenica on 19 April 1993, 15 civilians were killed and 50 seriously wounded. Bosnian Genocide (1993). Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

On 19 April 1993, Croat forces attacked Zenica. The attack resulted in 65 casualties; 15 Bosniak civilians were killed, while another 50 were seriously injured, many of them paralyzed and blinded from shrapnels. The shells landed in three groups of two, at 12:10 p.m., 12:24 p.m. and 12:29 p.m.

Croats blamed the Serbs for the massacre, but Hague Tribunal discarded such claims during Dario Kordic trial.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established that the market place in Zenica was shelled by the Croatian Council of Defence (HVO) on April 19, 1993 from the village of Putičevo, 15 kilometres from Zenica, resulting in a massacre.

Slaughter of Bosniak Children around Srebrenica in 1992

Here is what the Bosnian Serb army had been doing around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica genocide. According to the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague (case of Naser Oric):

“Between April 1992 and March 1993, Srebrenica town and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircrafts. Each onslaught followed a similar pattern. Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance, and destroyed their homes. During this period, Srebrenica was subjected to indiscriminate shelling from all directions on a daily basis. Potočari in particular was a daily target for Serb artillery and infantry because it was a sensitive point in the defence line around Srebrenica. Other Bosnian Muslim settlements were routinely attacked as well. All this resulted in a great number of refugees and casualties.”

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child killed by Serb sniper in the vicinity of Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Bosnian Muslim towns and villages around Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child killed by Serb shelling in Gorazde, south-west of Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child killed by Serb shelling of Gorazde, south west of Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child Sead Bekric seriously wounded and blinded in the Srebrenica Children Massacre in April of 1993, two years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child Sead Bekric seriously wounded and blinded in the Srebrenica Children Massacre in April of 1993, two years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child Sead Bekric seriously wounded and blinded in the Srebrenica Children Massacre in April of 1993, two years before the Srebrenica massacre..

Bosniak child Sead Bekric seriously wounded and blinded in the Srebrenica Children Massacre in April of 1993, two years before the Srebrenica massacre..

Bosniak child killed by Serb shelling of Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Bosniak child seriously wounded by Serb shelling of Srebrenica in 1992, three years before the Srebrenica massacre.

Remains of a pregnant Bosniak woman, Zekira Begic, and her unborn baby excavated from a mass grave Suha in the Srebrenica region, near Bratunac. Fetus body was preserved in mother’s womb with tiny legs and undeveloped brain clearly visible. Pathologist at the University Clinical Center Tuzla inspected the remains of defenceless victims.

Remains of Bosniak children killed by Serbs in the Suha massacre in 1992, Bratunac/Srebrenica pocket, three years before the Srebrenica genocide. 

Photo memory of the Brcko massacre in the Bosnian Genocide

A sequence of photographs showing murders of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians by local Serb police officer Goran Jelisic. Jelisic was apprehended by a Team of US Navy SEALs (as a NATO SFOR Team) in January 1998. He was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment. Other photographs show mass graves of more than 3,000 Bosniak residents, slaughtered by Serbs, in and around Brcko during the 1992 Bosnian genocide.

Photo evidence courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the Hague (ICTY).

Ahmici Massacre, Croats Slaughtered 120 Bosniak Civilians

Bosnian Genocide (1993), Ahmici massacre of 120 Bosniak civilians. Photograph shows destroyed mosque in Ahmici with derogatory messages written on the rubble of the mosque. Croat forces were responsible for the Ahmici massacre.

The Ahmici massacre was the culmination of the Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing. It is the single largest massacre committed by the Croats against Bosniaks in the Bosnian war.

The attack began at 05:30 hours on April 16, 1993. The Croat Defence Council (HVO) shelled the Bosniak part of Ahmići and moved in killing many Bosniaks, including women, children and the elderly.

Photograph shows bodies of 4 dead Bosniaks. Photo courtesy the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). -- Bosnian Genocide (1993), Ahmici massacre of 120 Bosnian Muslim civilians, perpetrated by the Croat forces.

They destroyed a large number of Bosniak homes, and caused extensive damage to the village’s two mosques. An estimate puts the death toll to at least 120.

Croats kill at least 80 Bosniaks in the Stupni Do massacre, Bosnian Genocide

Photo courtesy: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) -- Photographs shows three killed women -- Bosnian Genocide (1993): Stupni Do massacre, in which at least 80 Bosniaks died, was perpetrated by the Bosnian Croat forces.

The Stupni Do massacre was one of the most brutal massacres committed by Croatian forces on Bosniak civilians during the Croat-Bosniak war in the village of Stupni Do in Vareš municipality. It was committed on October 23, 1993 by Croatian Defense Council (HVO) units called “Apostoli” and “Maturice” led by Ivica Rajić who pleaded guilty before ICTY for war crimes on October 2005. The Croat forces took control of the village and massacred most of the captured people. They raped the women before killing them and looted all houses before setting them on fire. The confirmed number of victims is at least 80.

Bosniaks Accuse Croats of Massacring 80 Villagers
Published: October 26, 1993

DRABAVINE, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 25— Masked Croat soldiers killed 80 Bosniaks [Bosnian Muslims] in a village in central Bosnia over the weekend, but the toll may be far higher because most residents are still unaccounted for, survivors said today.

Serbs Massacre at least 47-50 Bosniaks near Sarajevo (Ahatovici massacre)

Ahatovići massacre refers to a massacre committed by the Serbs of at least 47 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) from the village of Ahatovići, in the municipality of Novi Grad, Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Note: In 1996, about 50 bodies were exhumed. The following is original reporting of the massacre:

Bosniak Survivors Recount Brutality and Mass Slayings

John F. Burns
June 21, 1992

SARAJEVO, — Toward dusk last Sunday, a bus carrying 56 Muslim Slav [Bosniak] villagers being held hostage by Serbian nationalist troops was halted on a mountainous country road about 10 miles north of Sarajevo.

The hostages, men between 17 and 63 years old, were told that the bus’s radiator had boiled over and that they should lie face-down on the floor while water was fetched from a stream.

According to survivors, the Serbian gunmen then got off the bus, walked 30 yards up a stony hillside and opened fire on the vehicle with a bazooka and automatic weapons.

Witness: Serbs Killed 1,350 Bosniak Prisoners in Brcko camp

“They raped one woman whose children and parents were present, along with everyone else… They took 15 people out and slit their throats on the grass… Three people who were watching at the window and were noticed by the guards, their throats were slit as well. With my own eyes I have seen this… I will forever remember [my friend’s] screaming and yelling not to kill him, and not to slit his throat” – Alija Lujinovic, Bosnian Genocide survivor.

Bosnian Muslim Describes Slaughter by Serbs

(Click to Enlarge) Bosnian Genocide (1992): Bosnian Genocide (1992): A 1992 photographs of mass grave in the area of Brcko showing a Bimeks truck (in the top right-hand corner). The trucks were believed to have been used to transport bodies. Bosniak (Bosnian Muslims) victims tied, killed and thrown into mass grave.

WASHINGTON — A 53-year-old Muslim from Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday said Serbian guards at a detention camp systematically slaughtered 1,350 captives during seven weeks of terror in May and June [1992] (see some of the killing in action)

Alija Lujinovic, who is from the town of Brcko in northeast Bosnia, told his horrific tale to a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, then again to reporters at a news conference.

Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., said he did not present Lujinovic at a public hearing because his staff had not had adequate time to corroborate his story. But he said “a lot of the things he’s saying are consistent with other reports… including intelligence.”

Lujinovic, a traffic engineer who denied any involvement in politics or violence, said he was captured May 3 [1992] while hiding in a cellar after Serbian irregulars and troops of the former Yugoslav army attacked his town.

Bosnian Muslims and Jews have a joint experience of persecution and genocide in Europe

Bosnian genocide mass grave at Pilica farm near Srebrenica, twenty feet deep and a hundred feet long, was excavated by forensic pathologists in 1996. Bosniak victims were blindfolded with hands tied behind their back. Photo by Gilles Peress (from The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar (Scalo Books, 1998)).

Dr. Mustafa Cerić is the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina (leader of Islamic community) and a prominent member of the Committee on Conscience fighting against the Holocaust denial.

Invited by president of Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah, David de Rothschild, Reisu-l-ulema Dr. Mustafa Cerić took part today in Paris, the seat of the UNESCO, in the presentation of Projet Aladin, accompanied by some two hundred prominent intellectuals, historians, academics and political personae from thirty countries, most of them from the Islamic world.

The gathering is about cultural and educational initiative for promotion of the Jewish-Muslim dialogue based upon mutual acquaintance, respect and refusal to deny and diminish Holocaust. Hosted by the UNESCO, former President of France Jacques Chirac, Prince El-Hassan bin Talaal of Jordan, former President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid and former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, project “Aladdin” aims to assist in Muslim-Jewish dialogue so as to remove many a prejudice and stereotype which burden the Muslim-Jewish relations in the world.

“The call of conscience”

A statement, titled “The Call of Conscience”, was adopted to denote the principle of the project: