Utah
killer rewarded with Islamic burial in native Bosnia
March 03, 2007 8:34 AM
TALOVICI, Bosnia-Herzegovina-The teenager who killed five people in
a U.S. shopping mall and died in a police shootout was buried Saturday
in his native village in eastern Bosnia.
The father of Sulejman Talovic said his son "wounded the hearts of all
our family" when he opened fire on Feb. 12 at the mall in Salt Lake City,
Utah, killing five people and wounding four.
"I feel sorry for my child, but I also feel sorry for all the innocent
people he has killed," the 18-year-old's father, Suljo Talovic, told The
Associated Press.
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Muslim Suljo Talovic father of teenager Sulejman Talovic who killed five
people in a Utah shopping mall on Feb 12, says Islamic prayers over the
grave of his son during his funeral in the village of Talovici, 100 kms
northeast of Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Bosnia, on Saturday, March 3,
2007. Several hundred people gathered at the nearby cemetery for
Sulejman's open-casket funeral. Sulejman Talovic fired randomly at shoppers
at a mall in Salt Lake City, Utah. |
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Suljo Talovic spoke while standing where his family's house once stood
in Talovici, an eastern Bosnian hamlet that still bears the scars of the
1992-95 war, including houses pocked with machine-gun fire or, like Talovic's,
reduced to rubble by shelling.
Moments later, several hundred people gathered at the nearby cemetery
for Sulejman's open-casket funeral. His crying mother, Sabira, collapsed
after touching her son's face and was carried away.
Suljo Talovic said he would not make excuses for his son, but did not
understand how a teenager could buy a gun in the United States.
"The authorities are guilty for not alerting us that he bought a gun.
In the U.S., you cannot buy cigarettes if you are underaged, but you can
buy a gun," he said.
The Talovic family had left for the United States in 1998 following
years of violence and upheaval, after fighting broke out in 1992. Serb
troops laid siege to Talovici, bombing it for a year before invading in
March 1993.
Sulejman was just 4 when he, his three siblings, his mother Sabira and
his grandfather fled on foot to Srebrenica, while his father Suljo hid
in the mountains with other men from the village, relatives said.
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Muslim woman Sabira Talovic mother of teenager Sulejman Talovic who killed
five people in a Utah shopping mall on Feb 12, grieves along with several
hundred people who came to pay their respect for the Utah killer. |
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Srebrenica was besieged, bombed and crowded with hungry Muslim families
like the Talovics. One bomb killed Sulejman's grandfather. Sabira Talovic
and the four children, rescued by the U.N. along with other displaced families,
made their way to the government-controlled town of Tuzla, impoverished
but safe.
Sulejman's father, meanwhile still in Srebrenica, narrowly survived
the 1995 killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys there by Serb forces
loyal to then-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. The Srebrenica massacre
was Europe's worst since World War II.
The family reunited in Tuzla later that year when a peace agreement
brought an end to the war. They later obtained Croatian citizenship and
in 1998 joined relatives already living in Utah.
