Victims of Kasindolska Street Murders Await Justice

Not one perpetrator has been tried for the death of 37 men, taken from their homes in Sarajevo’s Kasindolska street in 1992 and found buried in a mass grave 15 years later.

Seventeen years since the capture and murder of 37 men from Kasindolska street, in the Ilidza district of Sarajevo, their families await justice; nobody has yet been tried for their deaths.

Having found and buried the remains of her 25-year-old brother, following a 15-year search, Nisveta Zametica faced yet another shock.

In March 2009, the Hague Tribunal, ICTY, determined that the evidence proving the men from Kasindolska Street had been killed was insufficient.

The crime was thus excluded from the indictment against Radovan Karadzic, former president of Republika Srpska and supreme authority over the Bosnian Serb military and police at the time.

“It is as if they never existed or lived… as if nobody had taken them away,” said Zametica, president of the “Association of Kasindolska Street Women – 1992”

“We have evidence showing they were taken away and handed over to the Republika Srpska authorities, so how come the prosecution was not able to prove Karadzic’s responsibility for the Kasindolska crime on the basis of this evidence and witnesses’ statements?” she asked.

The names of the Kasindolska street victims have been mentioned in only one verdict.

This was first instance verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, concerning the responsibility of Momcilo Mandic, former justice minister in the Republika Srpska, for the misdeeds of the correctional facilities in the Sarajevo and Foca areas, including Kula, where the 38 men were first taken.

However, Mandic was acquitted of all charges.

That verdict said the 37 men were taken from the prison in an unknown direction, and all of them remain missing and thereby presumed “deprived of their lives”.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina says that it has conducted, and is conducting, investigations into the murders, but has not filed any indictments against the perpetrators to date.

Zametica is deeply disappointed, claiming that during her long search for her brother’s body, she gathered key data on the people responsible for the crime.

These she describes as senior officials in Karadzic’s wartime government.

They trusted their neighbours:

The 38 men were taken from their homes in Kasindolska street to the Kula facility on May 14, 1992.

Fifteen years later in May 2007, the remains of 37 of them were found in a mass grave at Crni Vrh, on Mount Romanija, in Bosnia.

The only survivor, Resad Brdaric, left Kula after having spent seven days there. “Of the 38 of Kasindolska street residents, I was the only one who got out of there,” he said in March 2009, while testifying at the trial of Radoje Lalovic and Soniboj Skiljevic, for crimes committed in Kula.

“All the others were alive when I left the facility. I know that they were found and had been killed, but I do not know anything more about it,” Brdaric added.

The youngest victim was only 18, Emir Hajdarevic, taken away and killed together with his father.

The men’s wives and relatives do not recall previous problems with their Serbian neighbours, adding that they had organized joint patrols at the beginning of the conflict.

“There were joint patrols until mid-April,” Itaba Turkovic told BIRN – Justice Report. Her husband and brother-in-law were taken away on May 14.

“People used to say that they would not let anyone occupy Kasindolska street, which was one of the main streets.

“But one evening they [the Serbs] said they no longer wanted to participate in joint sentries. They formed [their own] checkpoints. Police were distributed every 100 metres.”

That spring, Nisveta Zametica tried to persuade her brother and brother-in-law to leave that part of the city, which was then under Serbian control.

“I managed to evacuate my sister and her children but my brother and brother-in-law did not want to leave their homes,” she said.

“They stayed there in their newly built and decorated houses… They agreed with their Serbian neighbours that they would stay there together and guard the street. They thought the war would bypass that part of the town.”

After she herself left the street, Zametica contacted her brother by phone on the evening on May 13, one day before he was taken away.

“I told him to leave and I said that a friend would transport them by minivan. But he did not want to leave the others in such a way,” she said.

“He was not afraid of anything, but I noticed he was afraid at that time. There were things that I sensed, without him having to tell me. Even though we were so far away, we could understand each other very well,” she recalled.

The following day, on May 14, when Nisveta called her neighbours in Kasindolska street, wanting to speak to her brother, nobody picked up the phone.

When the neighbour finally answered, she told her that all the men had been arrested.

Itaba Turkovic recalled what happened in the street on May 14. “There were some attacks and shelling in the morning hours,” she told Justice Report.

“Then they [the Serbs] asked us to surrender. I went to my neighbour’s, taking my children. The men stayed behind to agree what to do next. They decided to surrender.”

Resad Brdaric, the sole survivor of the 38 men, said they handed over their weapons to their Serbian neighbours and gathered in front of the house of Alija Duric.

“The [Serbian] neighbours were standing there, holding automatic guns. They were making a list of people and weapons. Then they took us towards Ilidza, and placed us in an unfinished house.

“Later on they drove us to Kula, where we were divided into two groups and detained,” Brdaric said.

Insufficient evidence?

The inhumane conditions in Kula and the mistreatment of the prisoners from 1992. to 1993. were described in detail in an indictment filed against Radoje Lalovic and Soniboj Skiljevic, former manager and deputy manager of the jail.

Among other things, they are charged with “having known” that their subordinates and other people, “mainly members of the Serbian Army”, took some detainees to unknown locations and killed them. They allegedly failed to undertake any actions in order to prevent the crime or report the perpetrators.

In an indictment filed in October 2008, the Prosecution of the Hague Tribunal, ICTY, charged Radovan Karadzic, former president of Republika Srpska and supreme commander of its armed forces, with the murder of 37 men from Kasindolska Street.

An indictment annex, called “Incident 13.2”, mentioned that, in mid-May 1992, 37 male residents of Kasindolska street were taken away from the Butmir Facility in Kula and killed.

But five months later, the ICTY decided to remove these allegations from the indictment against Karadzic on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

“The alleged incident, mentioned in paragraph 13.2 (…) was not sufficiently supported by the first document submitted to us, which alleges that, on May 21, 1992 the 37 men were still held in the detention center in Kula, but it does not contain any evidence on their murder,” the decision read.

“The second document mentioned the arrest of those people but it does not make any mention of the murder of 38 men who were arrested in Kasindolska street on May 14, 1992,” the Tribunal decision added.

The Hague Prosecution said that, “such decisions made by the Court are not usually commented on”.

Therefore Olga Kavran, a spokesperson of the Hague prosecution declined to answer BIRN – Justice Report’s question about whether any additional investigation had been conducted into this crime, or whether the crime might eventually be included in the indictment of Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, who is currently at large.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, procesutor Behaija Krnjic, says only that “several cases [exist] in which investigations pertaining to the Kasindolska Street crime are being conducted”.

Krnjic told BIRN – Justice Report: “As far as the Hague Tribunal is concerned, I have been informed that the Prosecution did not have all available evidence to include the crime allegations in the indictment.

“They have now gathered the evidence, but it will be very difficult to get the Court admit it and allow the expansion of the Karadzic’s indictment.”

Zametica, who has spent years trying to find out what had happened to those men, considers there is sufficient evidence to hold Karadzic responsible for this crime.

She mentions a document made available to the Bosnian and Hague Prosecutions, allegedly signed by Milenko Tepavcevic, former chief of the Public Safety Station in Sarajevo’s Novi Grad district.

The document, submitted on May 25, 1992 to the Republika Srpska Interior and Justice ministries, asked them to “make a decision concerning the future status of 38 people arrested and taken from Kasindolska Street by the Territorial Defence”.

The document suggested, claims Zametica, that the people from the street should not be exchanged because examinations had determined that they held “radical views”.

After the war, Tepavcevic worked with the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA.

He was suspended on December 7, 2007, following an investigation into his role in the murders committed in Kasindolska street. SIPA told BIRN – Justice Report he was then retired because he had “already spent 40 years in service”.

State prosecution policy is not to talk about ongoing investigations.

He recently appeared before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a Prosecution witness at the trial of Radoje Lalovic and Soniboj Skiljevic. It was on this occasion that he was presented with the document mentioned by Zametica.

He denied having signed the document, saying it had been “falsified”.

“Its content is totally incorrect. I reject it,” he said, adding that he did not know anything about the abduction and murder of the men from Kasindolska Street.

He claimed he only found out about their deaths “later on, from some media reports”.

Their watches stopped in a mass grave:

Zametica, on the other hand, sees the document as proof that Tepavcevic and Karadzic were responsible for the deaths of the men from Kasindolska Street.

“He was the one who sent the letter on May 25 responding to Momcilo Mandic and Tomislav Kovac,” she said, concerning Tepavcevic.

“We have got witnesses to confirm that they [the men] were handed over to the Republika Srpska authorities. We have got the document and their wristwatches, which were found in the [mass] grave.

“Some of the watches stopped on May 25 and others on May 26,” Zametica added.

While Momcilo Mandic was the Bosnian Serb justice minister at the time, Tomislav Kovac, meanwhile, was chief of the Police Station in Ilidza before becoming interior minister.

In various statements made over the years, Kovac has denied responsibility for the crime committed against the Kasindolska street residents and has placed the blame on Tepavcevic.

“Under a decision made by the Crisis Committee, those people were sent to Kula prison,” Kovac said in 2007 for local media, of the 38 men.

“What is disputable in this case is the letter signed by Milenko Tapavcevic, in which he proposed that these people, originating from Sandzak, should not be exchanged. One can therefore clearly see that Tepavcevic was an abettor and proponent of the crime,” Kovac added.

Zametica has filed a criminal report against Tepavcevic, claiming that, by signing the mentioned document, he “signed the death penalty” of the 37 men who were taken away in May 1992.

“In the course of their examination they determined that the Kasindolska Street residents had radical ideas. Tepavcevic’s opinion was that they did not qualify for an exchange,” she said.

“What did they qualify for? What for, if not for an exchange? We found their dead bodies in Sokolac, at Romanija mountain,” Zametica said.

As the President of the Association, Zametica has been in touch with the Bosnian State Prosecution for years in an attempt to find an explanation for the crime.

She has not established any cooperation with the Hague Prosecution, however, saying she “did not know how to get in touch with them”.

“I have accompanied these women in their search for these men for 16 years,” she said.

“We have led our own battle in our own way, but many women have given up. I shall continue fighting for as long as I can. I am not afraid of the ones who are still at large and walk freely,” Zametica said.

Merima Husejnovic is BIRN – Justice Report journalist. [email protected] Justice Report is weekly online BIRN publication.