|
Over 70 Muslim War Crime Victims Exhumed in Bosnia
SARAJEVO, July 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The bodies of more than 70 people, all believed to be Bosnian Muslim civilians killed by Serb forces during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, have been dug up from mass graves over the past few days, officials said Thursday.
The corpses were recovered from a number of graves around two sites in northwestern and eastern Bosnia.
More than 40 bodies were exhumed from two mass graves located in the region of Sanski Most, some 37 miles west of Banja Luka, Jasmin Odobasic, an official of the Muslim-led state commission for missing persons told AFP.
Two days of exhumation work at the graves ended late Wednesday, he said.
One grave contained what are believed to be the remains of up to 20 Muslim civilians believed to be from surrounding villages.
"The remains will have to undergo anthropological analysis so we can determine if there are 19 or 20 of them," Odobasic said, adding that the skeletons were not complete, complicating a precise toll.
The other mass grave was discovered in a nearby forest and contains the remains of 25 bodies believed to be those of Bosnian Muslims from Sanski Most.
"According to the witnesses' testimonies, these are people from Sanski Most who were taken away by Serb forces" in July 1992, Odobasic said.
The Serb leadership at the time claimed the victims suffocated in a truck while being transported to the notorious Manjaca detention camp nearby, he added.
Another prison camp, at Foca, has already brought two separate cases of war crimes forward. In the first case, three Bosnian Serbs were given sentences ranging between 12 and 28 years in prison for a campaign of systematic rape and sexual abuse of non-Serb women.
Now, the Bosnian Serb who ran the Foca camp - where prosecutors said, "healthy men were turned into walking skeletons" - may be looking at no less than 25 years in prison, if the demands of the prosecutors are realized by the U.N. tribunal.
Milorad Krnojelac, 60, is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between April 1992 and August 1993. He has entered a not guilty plea on all counts.
According to the indictment, prisoners - hundreds of Muslim civilians and non-Serb men, some of whom were mentally handicapped or physically disabled - were detained for prolonged periods of time and subjected to "repeated torture and beatings, countless killings, forced labor and inhumane conditions." Krnojelac was in a position to prevent these incidents, but did not do so, prosecutor Peggy Kuo said.
Meanwhile, the remains of 34 Bosnian Muslim civilians were unearthed near the eastern town of Visegrad, the head of the commission, Amor Masovic, told AFP.
The remains of 27 bodies were exhumed from three mass graves while others were scattered around the area, some in ruined houses in which they had been burned alive, Masovic said.
"Among the victims there were 13 women, three children and 18 men," Masovic said, adding that 25 bodies were immediately identified.
The oldest identified victim was a 92 year-old woman, burned alive in her house, while the youngest were two seven-year-old girls, he said, adding that four days of excavation work ended Thursday.
Bosnian Muslims made up the majority of the pre-war population in the Visegrad region. Many of them were either killed or driven away after Bosnian Serb forces overran the area in early 1992.
Some 1,200 Muslims from the region are still listed as missing while 230 bodies have so far been found in the area.
According to figures from the International Commission on Missing Persons, some 25,000 to 30,000 people are still missing from Bosnia's war.
Meanwhile, the parliament in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska (RS) said Thursday it would next week debate a crucial law which could lead to the arrest of war crimes suspects, including former leader Radovan Karadzic, AFP reported.
The parliament said in a statement it would give a first reading to a draft law providing for cooperation between the Banja Luka authorities and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Tuesday.
Republika Srpska is under increased pressure to arrest war crimes suspects ever since Belgrade extradited former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to the ICTY in The Hague last month.
The chief suspects sought by the U.N. tribunal are Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, both believed to be hiding in the RS.
Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic told Bosnian Serb television late Wednesday he expected the parliament to back the draft law, which provides for local authorities to arrest and hand over war crimes suspects to The Hague.
Ivanic said failure to approve the law would "send a clear message" that the RS was "not ready to cooperate" with the U.N. court, warning that such a result would cause "big problems" and call into question the functioning of his government.
Even if the bill passes its first reading, there will not be a final vote before September because the parliament is in summer recess in August.
RS interior ministry spokesman Zoran Glusac said on Wednesday Bosnian Serb police would not arrest war crimes suspects until the law was adopted.
Bosnia's NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) kicked off military exercises in the southeast of the country on Wednesday, amid press reports that the troops might be getting ready to seize Karadzic, AFP reported.
The war games, codenamed Cerberus and involving 1,200 troops, are scheduled to run until July 21st in the region of Foca where Karadzic is believed to be hiding.
However, an SFOR spokesman in the southern town of Mostar denied the exercises were linked to Karadzic's fate and noted that they had been scheduled for some time.
However, the Bosnian media and public feverishly expect the arrest of the country's most wanted war crimes suspect, Karadzic, with rumors spreading throughout the country that a move against him was imminent.
"Everyone talks about Karadzic's arrest. That is all that we have been doing over the past few days," Elvir Ramic, a 22-year old student said as five of his friends in a Sarajevo coffee shop nodded in approval.
"For the first time since the war, people really believe that he will face justice," Elvir said, while his friend Samir stressed that the "time has come for the Karadzic's story to end."
"We are all waiting to celebrate the news of his arrest," Samir added.
|
