Bury or Keep in Ossuaries
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Amor Masovic, member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, considers that about 4,000 unidentified bodies, which are kept in various ossuaries, while Milutin Misic, another member of the Board of Directors of the Institute, considers that the revision of those remains is the priority.
Had everyone done their job properly, we would not have been in this situation, Misic said.
Marko Jurisic, another member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that they prepared a draft order related to the revision of the factual status on January 6 last year and forwarded it to the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina for further consideration.
It was agreed that the Institute would give its opinion about how to conduct a revision of the factual status in the ossuaries. This was done on the basis of our experience. The opinion was forwarded to the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which should give its proposals, Masovic said at a press conference held in Sarajevo on February 24.
Members of the Board of Directors agree that the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina should decide whether the unidentified bodies, which are kept in ossuaries, will be buried or remain where they are.
Masovic says that 2,140 bone samples arrived from Banja Luka in the period from 2002 to 2008 and that, following an analysis of those samples, it was determined that some of the bodies should not be there.
It was determined that 755 bone samples did not match any of the DNA samples available at the International Commission for the Missing Persons, ICMP. This indicates that something is wrong, Masovic said.
As he said, it was determined that a certain number of bodies, which were exhumed from Lav cemetery in Sarajevo, originated from the Second World War. Masovic said that those bodies belonged to stillborns and parts of amputated body parts of people who either died during surgeries or were still alive.
Jurisic presented the Institute’s work results achieved during the last year, pointing out that 445 remains of the missing persons were exhumed and 872 persons were identified.
Also, he pointed to the fact that they faces problems because they still lacked relevant information about graves.
M.B.
