Fraudsters Target Reward for Finding Missing Bosnians

Mensud Omerovic, the secretary of the Vogosca council, told BIRN that the reward of 10,000 Bosnian marks (5,100 euros) has been on offer for more a decade, but so far no one has come forward with any genuine information that would help locate people who disappeared during wartime.

“According to a decision made about ten years ago, we will pay for any piece of information that leads to finding the missing, but we have never received valid information that would lead to the discovery of the missing people,” Omerovic said.

Ema Cekic, the president of the Families of the Missing from Vogosca Municipality association, said she has often been given false information on the whereabouts of war graves.

“People took me to some places, saying that graves were there, but there was nothing. They wanted to take the money,” Cekic told BIRN.

“The money will be given to a person who says where the grave is, but only after the bodies have been found in it and we have determined those are the missing people we are looking for,” she added.

She also said that she has spent two months this year investigating information that turned out to be false.

“Unfortunately, they used us, the living, but also the dead people,” she said.

Cekic said that she was told to send the money in advance if she wanted to know where the alleged graves were, but refused.

She explained that she is searching for 62 missing people from the Vogosca area, including 29 people who were taken away from the Planjina Kuca detention camp in Semizovac in 1992.

“We have never found them. I don’t know if we ever will… As time passes, the chances become smaller and smaller,” she said.