Bosnian Muslims pray near the coffins of their loved ones during the collective funeral of the bodies found in a mass grave
Kamicani, Bosnia:
Several hundred mourners gathered in the Bosnian village of Kamicani on Monday to bury six Bosnian Muslims killed 28 years ago in one of the most horrific episodes of the 1992-1995 war, with those present observing the strict precautions against coronaviruses.
Victims, mainly prisoners of wartime non-Serb detention camps near the town of Prijedor, were informed that they had been released in a prison exchange but were instead taken to the cliffs of Koricani in Central Bosnia, lined up at the edge of the ravine. and shot dead by Bosnian Serb forces in August 1992.
Five were recovered from rocks stacked on their bodies while the sixth was unearthed in the mass grave at Jablanica-Prosara, one of more than 70 mass grave sites in the region.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for 28 years … 28 long, painful and sad years,” 40-year-old Sanel Fazlic, standing in front of draped coffins containing the remains of his father and two uncles, told Reuters.
Relatives had planned to bury 30 victims, but the coronavirus epidemic prevented many people living abroad from attending.
It took years to locate the mass graves and identify the victims. Last year, 68 newly identified victims were buried in Kamicani and 10 others in other parts of the region.
The Prijedor region has experienced some of the most violent ethnic cleansing attacks in 1992 by Bosnian Serb police and army against Bosnians and Croats.
Villages were razed to the ground, thousands were taken to detention camps, more than 3,000 non-Serbs were executed and tens of thousands were driven from their homes.
Eleven former Bosnian Serb police officers have been convicted of the crime, including Darko Mrdja, who has been imprisoned for 17 years by the international war crimes tribunal based in The Hague. The rest were convicted by the Bosnian war crimes tribunal.
The suspected mastermind of the murder, Prijedor police chief Simo Drljaca, was killed in a gunfight with the NATO-led peacekeepers in 1997 when they first attempted to arrest of suspects still at large.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
