More than 6,800 Srebrenica Residents Identified

Witness Janc specified that 6,056 of the victims identified so far were found in primary and secondary mass graves. According to the witness’ testimony, the remains of 756 identified persons were found on the ground in the vicinity of mass graves or execution locations.
 
When asked whether there was a possibility that some soldiers were among the bodies found on the ground surface, Janc said that “the cause of death could not be determined” and that some of those persons were “shot, some were killed in battles, while some committed suicide.”
 
In his report Janc mentioned 37 identified victims, who belonged to a separate category, saying that they were found at other locations. They included six Srebrenica residents, who were shot by members of “Skorpioni”, who, as he said, were from Serbia, at Godjanske Bare, near Trnovo, in late July 1995.
 
Mladic, a former Commander of the VRS, is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of the United Nations protected enclave by that Army on July 11, 1995. Besides that, he is on trial for persecuting Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking UNPROFOR members hostage and terrorising Sarajevo citizens.
 
Janc specified that the International Commission for the Missing Persons performed the identification of victims through an analysis of remains on the basis of a list of people who went missing after the fall of Srebrenica. The list was compiled by the International Red Cross and other organisations. DNA samples taken from the remains were compared with samples given by closest relatives of the missing persons.
                          
He further said that the number of identified victims was still not final and that it was growing, considering the fact that new mass graves were still being discovered. According to Janc’s testimony, the number of unidentified victims, for whom no DNA samples from relatives exist, has been reduced. As he said, there are 142 “unique DNA profiles” of that type at this moment.
 
Janc stressed that about 800 more people who went missing after the fall of Srebrenica, had still not been found or identified.
 
He confirmed that the remains of people who were killed in 1992, as well as the remains of victims from Srebrenica who were killed in July 1995, were discovered in Gljeceva 1 secondary grave.
 
All those bodies had previously been exhumed from primary graves in the vicinity of Glogova and Redzici villages, near Bratunac.
 
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Tuesday, August 20.