Pensioners and Children Found in Bosnia War Graves

Amor Masovic, chairman of the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the court in Sarajevo on Thursday that 91 corpses had been exhumed from 34 wartime graves in the municipality of Prozor in central Bosnia.

Fifteen bodies have yet to be identified and 52 people were still missing, he said. All of them were killed or disappeared during the conflict in Bosnia in 1993. The biggest grave found so far was in the village of Lapsunj.

“These graves are specific for the reason that the victims are mostly older than 60 – as many as a third of them – but among those killed were two underage victims as well, a seven-month-old baby and a 15-year-old child. The mortal remains of two people older than 90 were found in these graves too,” said Masovic.

Masovic was testifying at the trial of Croatian Defence Council fighter Zeljko Jukic, who is charged with taking five prisoners from Prozor to the Duska Kosa dumping site on August 3, 1993. The prisoners have never been seen since.

The indictment also states that Jukic, alongside other Croatian Defence Council fighters, attacked the civilian Bosniak population in the village of Duge on July 6, 1993, when he killed a 73-year old man.

He is further charged with forcing Bosniak civilians to leave the village of Lapsunj on August 28, 1993, and participating in the disappearance of another man whose body has not been found.

Forensic expert Vedo Tuco also testified, saying that the exhumed Prozor victims died violently and most had head wounds.

“Crushed skulls, brains, spinal cord. Death from bleeding out and suffocation. Some bodies were found carbonised, which means they were probably incinerated. It was impossible to determine the cause of death for some victims, because the skeletal remains were not damaged,” explained Tuco.

The trial is scheduled to resume on April 11.