Skulls Found in Bosnian War Grave Exhumation
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The Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina told BIRN on Monday that investigators carrying out an exhumation of a suspected war grave have found two skulls that are believed to belong to Bosniaks from the village of Rizvanovici in the Prijedor area.
“Available data suggest that the victims are most probably local residents of this village,” said the Missing Persons Institute’s spokesperson, Emza Fazlic.
The state prosecution said the remains would be sent for DNA analysis and potential identification.
The trial of a former Bosnian Serb Army soldier, Sretko Pavic, is ongoing before the Bosnian state court for crimes committed in Rizvanovici.
Under a first-instance verdict handed down in June this year, Pavic was sentenced to 13 years in prison for participating in the killing of five civilians in the village in July 1992.
Pavic was found guilty of having taken away civilians who were being held in a detention facility near a checkpoint in Rizvanovici and killing them in the vicinity of a nearby school.
The state prosecution also said on Monday that another exhumation was carried out at the Rakita graveyard in Vlasenica, where the complete remains of one person were found in a location outside the cemetery plots.
“The remains with clothes on them were wrapped in a blanket. Data available to the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina suggests that this was most probably a Bosniak victim who was killed in that area in 1992,” the Missing Persons Institute said.
The identity of the victim will be determined through a DNA analysis.
More than 7,000 people are still missing from the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
