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Muslim Bodies Exhumed in Bosnia, Refugees Return Wanes
SARAJEVO, June 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A total of 61 bodies, believed to be those of Muslim civilians killed by Serbian forces during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, were excavated from a mass grave in northeast Bosnia, the Muslim-led commission for missing persons said Wednesday.
The bodies were exhumed over the past 10 days from a 35-meter (116-foot) deep natural pit near Foca, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Sarajevo, Jasmin Odobasic, an official with the commission, told the French news wire AFP.
Identity documents found in the pit confirmed that the bodies were those of people killed in a Serb-run concentration camp in Foca at the beginning of the war, when Bosnian Serb forces, which had overrun the city, turned the former detention facility into the concentration camp, he added.
"The remains were exhumed from the first layer of soil. Although we do not expect to find any more bodies we will dig up one more layer to be sure," Odobasic said.
The commission is hoping that its findings could serve as evidence in the process against Milorad Krnojelac, the former commander of the Foca camp, who is facing trial at a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Krnojelac, Foca prison camp commander in 1992 and 1993, was detained by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in June 1998, after being arrested in Foca by the NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia.
He has been charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war at the time of his service as prison commander in Foca.
Odobasic said the commission intended to carry on digging at the gravesite until it had retrieved, not only all the bodies, but the many bullet cases found there, as well as the ropes that had been used to tie up the victims before executing them and throwing them into the pit.
In other news, the government of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation announced Wednesday that it had called a conference aimed at boosting local support for the flagging process of refugee returns.
In an announcement marking World Refugee Day, the federal minister of social and refugee affairs, Sefer Halilovic, said Saturday's meeting would seek fresh funds from representatives of over 300 successful local businesses.
"If we can seek support for this process from various foreign countries, then we see no reason not to ask our citizens and companies to also provide some help," Halilovic told a press conference.
He said the ministry had also urged the Muslim-Croat army to share the burden of carrying out reconstruction work with foreign peacekeepers.
"It is not logical that the (NATO-led Stabilization Force) SFOR soldiers build our infrastructure while our army is sitting in the barracks doing nothing," Halilovic asserted.
The minister said he had also called on pensioners and employees to donate money to a refugee return fund, and on young people to join in reconstruction work on destroyed homes.
Although the project was launched by the Muslim-Croat entity's government, Halilovic explained that it has been supported by Bosnia's central authorities and is also aimed at refugees in the Bosnian Serb entity.
According to UNHCR figures, there are still over one million refugees from Bosnia's 1992-95 war, the majority of them internally displaced and only a smaller number remaining in other countries.
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