Utah gunman portrayed as good Muslim by family

February 15, 2007 12:43 PM

TALOVICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina-Relatives back home say Utah gunman Sulejman Talovic's early life in the Balkans was marked by war, poverty and upheaval, with the family fleeing by foot from Serb forces when Talovic was just 4 years old.

Sulejman Talovic. Noticeable is his nascent Wahhabi-style beard.

Talovic was just a toddler when the war broke out in Bosnia in 1992. Serb troops laid siege to the tiny hamlet of Talovici in northeastern Bosnia, bombing it for a year before finally overrunning the village in March 1993, relatives said Thursday.

"We were besieged and bombed day and night. We couldn't stick our noses out of the house," recalled cousin Redzo Talovic, 59.

Sabira Talovic fled on foot with Sulejman and his three sisters while her husband, Suljo, hid in the mountains with other men from the village, relatives said.

"Many left the village, only a few made it," said Murat Avdic, 54, a friend of the family.

The mother and children, exhausted, desperate and hungry, made their way to nearby enclave of Srebrenica, also besieged, bombed and crowded with starving families like the Talovics. Relatives say despite the conditions, they were quiet, gentle and caring.

"Those were really nice people, never argued with anybody about anything. During the war, they shared the little food they had with others," said Sefko Talovic, 59, a distant relative. "His father helped other injured people flee when the village fell although he himself was injured too," he said.

Later that year, Sabira Talovic and the four children were among the displaced rescued by the U.N. They made their way to the government-controlled town of Tuzla, impoverished but safe.

"I remember they arrived in 1993 on an overloaded U.N. truck and settled here in an empty house the owner had left," said former neighbor Zijad Cerkic in the Tuzla suburb of Bare.

"They were very poor, they had lost everything, but they were very nice and quiet people," Cerkic said, recalling the young Sulejman as "a good child, always with a smile on his face."

Sulejman's father, meanwhile, narrowly survived the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces loyal to then-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. The massacre of civilians was Europe's worst since World War II.

The family finally reunited in Tuzla later that year when a peace agreement brought an end to the war. But the accord divided up the country, putting their native Talovici in the Serb-controlled half of the country, and they did not dare return, relatives said.

They made their way to Zagreb, Croatia, where they obtained Croatian citizenship. In 1998, they joined family members already living in Utah. They created new lives for themselves in Salt Lake City, relatives said.

"I spoke to his father on the phone almost every month since they left to the United States, and he said for the first time they have a decent life, they have a home, jobs and they were happy," said Redzo Talovic.

On Monday, Sulejman Talovic, described by his Utah neighbors as a "loner" who always dressed in black, opened fire at a Salt Lake City shopping mall, killing five people and wounding four before being shot dead by police.

The news came as a shock to his extended family back in Talovici.

"When I heard his name on TV, I fainted. I still can't believe what he did," said a cousin, Mina Talovic, 54. "I remember him as a happy little boy sitting in my lap."

"Not in my wildest dreams could I have presumed Sulejman killed those people. When I heard his name, I fell from the sofa," Redzo Talovic said.

"What got into him? This is what we are all asking ourselves. We are all in shock," he said.

Avdic speculated that the teen had been traumatized by what he saw and experienced as a child of war. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, and 1.8 million others lost their homes.

"I'm convinced the war did this in Utah," he said. "There cannot be any other reason."

Relatives describe a clan scarred and scattered by a war that destroyed their lives and kept them far from home. Most of the homes in Talovici remain in ruins, including the house Suljo Talovic built a year before the war broke out.

Most of the 30 original families living in Talovici fled, most to Switzerland or to the U.S., said Sefko Talovic.

"Nobody even thought of returning into Serb land," he said. "Only in 2000 a few of us visited Talovici for the first time. Everything was burned and destroyed."

In 2003, eight families return home and fixed up their homes, and Sulejman Talovic's family was talking about doing the same, relatives said.

"We are all dismayed. We are having a hard time connecting that horrible act with the little smiling boy we remember," Redzo Talovic said.

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