By Slavisa Sabljic
The exhumation of the mass grave in Vrelo near Cazin at the beginning of November of last year as well as other grave locations, especially in locations on Mt. Ozren, has confirmed forecasts by experts from the Office for the Search for Missing and Imprisoned Persons of Republika Srpska according to which exhumation of human remains of the remaining Serbian soldiers and civilians, most of whom were killed, on the territory of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation will most probably be stopped.
"For example, from the mass grave not far from the Serbian village of Vrelo in Cazin municipality, we exhumed the human remains of only four executed persons, while no less that 67 dead bodies had been (previously) dug up and taken to some other location. And this was done only a month before we were scheduled to come and conduct exhumations in this location. A similar thing happened with a mass grave not far from Tomislavgrad where executed Serbs were buried who had been extradited by Croatian and Slovenian authorities to Bosnia-Herzegovina to fight for "its multiethnicity". Somehow at the same time, that is, as we were preparing to begin exhumations of the mass grave, the bodies were moved from it and today there is a stone quarry located there... All this is being done either to cover up the crimes or to extort money from the other side later on in exchange for victims that are being sought," said Milan Ivancevic, a member of the republic commission.
Prices in this dirty business have long been an ill-kept secret. Depending on the interest expressed by relatives and the "rating" of the person executed or killed, they range from 150 to as much as 1,000 convertible marks, the latter being the price for the discovery of one body on Mt. Ozren, for example.
"This autumn a Bosniak man asked us for 1,600 convertible marks for seven dead bodies of members of the Republika Srpska Army which, he told us at the time, were buried in the Klenovac cemetery on Mt. Ozren. Of course, we rejected the offer because we do not have funds for this purpose. However, when we went to this location we found seven empty graves from which human remains of Serbs had been exhumed and transferred who knows where. They were most probably victims of the rampaging mujahedeen who committed unprecedented crimes on the territory of Serbian Mt. Ozren during the war years... The best price for "services" went to a Bosniak man from Sarajevo who "sold" information about a mass grave in this city to the Serbian side for no less than 30,000 convertible marks," continued Ivancevic.
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"In the autumn of 1995 in Gostovici on Mt. Ozren 64 Serbian soldiers were executed in the most brutal manner imaginable. It is well known that this crime is the work of mujahedeen, primarily foreign mercenaries who came to Bosnia on orders from Haris Silajdzic and Alija Izetbegovic to fight on the side of the Muslim fundamentalists. When we established the location, that is, the site where they were buried, as we began to prepare for exhumations, the human remains vanished overnight and were transferred to another well-guarded location," said Vlado Petrovic, war time commander of one of the units of the Republic Srpska Army that fought in the Mt. Ozren region.
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In storage facilities in Banja Luka, Srpsko Sarajevo and Nevesinje there are 998 unidentified persons, out of 2,511 bodies of Serbian soldiers and civilians exhumed thus far from mass graves on the territory of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation. Out of the total number of exhumed persons, seventy percent have been identified, or 1,742 persons. Thumbing through requests for searches submitted primarily by families of executed, killed or missing persons, preparations are under way to find out the truth about the fate of 3,015 additional persons.
A total of 181 bodies have been exhumed from a mass grave in Mrkonjic Grad, while in Sarajevo's Lav cemetery the human remains of 204 persons have been found, primarily of civilians executed during the war in the capital city of the former (Yugoslav republic of) Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another 108 bodies of Serbian soldiers and civilians have been found in the location of Kamen near Glamoc. These are the largest mass graves among the 71 mass graves in Republika Srpska and the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation.
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"Exhumations on the territory of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation are another story. For example, we pulled 38 dead bodies of killed Sarajevo Serbs from the Lav cemetery. There would be nothing unusual about this if we had not had to dig meters into the earth. There we found remains of Sarajevo Serbs buried far below amputees from Kosevo hospitals and bones that were almost one hundred years old. We did the same at a mass grave in Bradina from which we exhumed the dead bodies of 35 executed Serbs from Konjic... The Bosniaks also tried to hide the victims of the so-called Tuzla column from us but we found them, nevertheless, buried five meters deep in the earth... In Stog on Mt. Ozren we found 21 executed members of the Republika Srpska Army. Fourteen of them were without heads... Through exhumation of those killed and transfer of graves, attempts are being made to cover up crimes in numerous other locations, especially at Kazani, which many believe to be the biggest killing field of the Serbian people during the Homeland War (Bosnian civil war). Entire Serbian families were slaughtered here and thrown into the depths of Kazani... Who knows if we will ever manage to retrieve their human remains. Who knows if we will ever manage to complete our work, the mission we have been working on for the past 12 years... We are not surprised in this effort by the attitude of the opposing side, that is, of the Bosniaks. We are concerned, however, by representatives of some international organizations, who are fully aware but who have yet to do anything... I will cite the example of Srebrenica, and the behavior of Amor Masovic, the head of the (Bosniak) team searching for missing persons... When the human remains of Bosniaks from the Srebrenica region were being exhumed, the bones of one and the same man would be distributed in four or even five nylon bags. All that the television cameras filmed and all that reporters and observers counted was bags. Not the contents of the bags. All this was done so that the public would have an impression of the crime that occurred, a crime that did occur but nevertheless not in the form in which it is being presented to the world. All this is an evil that any normal person cannot accept but which, unfortunately, is among us," said Aleksandar Radeta, president of the Office for the Search for Missing and Imprisoned Persons of Republika Srpska.
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Bosniaks are not the only ones asking for money for services offered to the Serbian side. There are also Serbs who do this and those who make very good money in this "business". A source told "Puls" and we later confirmed that a member of the Republika Srpska Army "sold" information regarding a mass grave at Hrgar near Bihac for 80,000 convertible marks where the human remains of approximately 80 Muslim civilians were later exhumed. The same source told us that another member of the Republika Srpske Army obviously well-informed regarding war time events in the region received 5,000 convertible marks for the "revelation" of a mass grave at Podovi near Drvar.
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"Much of what is happening around us in connection with crimes committed during the most recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is simply unbelievable. I'm not the only one who thinks so nor is this merely my subjective opinion... For example, local residents of Tuzla celebrate May 15 as Liberation Day, the day of their town, even though everyone is well aware that on that day approximately 150 young soldiers, who were members of the then Yugoslav People's Army serving their regular military duty in this town, and civilians accompanying them who wishing to leave the hell of Tuzla, were executed in cowardly and bestial fashion... When they left their barracks the soldiers were unarmed because the Tuzla authorities at the time demanded this of them. But this did not save them from (becoming victims of) the crime that today no one chooses to see... Members of the Commission and expert teams have so far exhumed more than 100 dead bodies of former soldiers of the Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian civilians. In 1997 37 of them were turned over to Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro), while 31 dead bodies or skeletal remains were exhumed two years later. In the most recent exhumations which began at the end of March (2004) about 40 more corpses were found. All 100 or so corpses were taken from the mass grave in Donji Trnavci. In the same location, that is, in the same grave sites where we exhumed 31 corpses in 1999, we again found skeletal remains, meaning that the Bosnia side had transferred human remains there from some other mass grave we have yet to investigate," said Aleksandar Radeta, president of the Office for the Search for Missing and Imprisoned Persons of Republika Srpska.
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Forensic specialist Zeljko Karan warned of problems he has encountered during the past 12 years of work on finding, exhuming and identifying the bodies of Serbian soldiers and civilians.
"In order to cast light on the complete details of a case, that is, to determine whether a crime has occurred, we have to conduct a comprehensive investigation. Countless times, I have found myself in the situation where I exhumed a completely preserved skeleton. Of course, in this case I could not establish whether a crime had been committed or not. If a man had his throat slit or suffered a lethal wound to the abdomen, in both cases several years later it is completely impossible to establish this from the skeleton. This is something that needs to be established by another person specialized in establishing the circumstances under which the death occurred. In other cases, such as the exhumation of the mass grave of Bradina near Konjic, it is completely clear that a crime was indeed committed. Because we know they were all alive when imprisoned, and this was followed by their liquidation in extremely brutal fashion. This was obvious when the mass grave was first opened and the bodies in it were found scattered in a haphazard manner. This is just one example that attests to the difficulty of the task facing all of us on the Commission. Without even getting into other problems connected with the numerous cases of planted evidence by the opposing side, which has transferred an indeterminate number of bodies thus far from one location to another that we are certain were formerly located in graves where today there are only gaping holes," said Zeljko Karan.
(Translated June 11, 2005 by sib)