Commanders Go Unpunished for Killings in Bosnia’s Konjic

It was the summer of 1992 when Hasna and Vasvija Buturovic went for a walk by Boracko Lake near the town of Konjic.

They never came back alive, and Sead Buturovic has been waiting for justice for the murders of his mother and sister for 24 years now.

“While walking by Boracko Lake, they came across a Serb patrol that made them turn off towards [the village of] Bijela, and so they took them up there and killed them brutally. They did not bury them, and animals ripped their corpses apart,” Buturovic told BIRN.

He said that two “little improvised coffins” were handed over to him in 1994.

“The mortal remains of my mother and sister could have fitted into two nylon bags. I identified my late mother on the basis of several pieces of a dress that she wore,” Buturovic recalled.

During the war, there was fighting around Konjic between all three main forces involved in the conflict – the Bosnian Serb Army, the Bosniak-led Bosnian Army and the Bosnian Croat wartime force, the Croatian Defence Council, as the area was on the border of areas controlled by all three of them.

More than 200 other civilians were killed in Konjic, but no senior officers have yet been brought to justice for their deaths on the basis of command responsibility, and only lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted.

The Bosnian state prosecution said that so far two judgments have been handed down by the state court for crimes against civilians in Konjic, one against members of the Bosnian Serb Army and one against Croatian Defence Council fighters.

On top of that, 17 members of the Bosniak-led Bosnian Army have been convicted of crimes in Konjic, while trials of 13 Bosnian Army ex-soldiers are still ongoing.

However, no extensive indictments against members of the Bosnian Serb Army and the Croatian Defence Council have been filed yet for the shelling of Konjic, although according to lawyers from the area, a series of investigations has been conducted.

Lawyer Nijaz Djuliman, who represents one of the families of a Konjic resident who was killed, said that the case in which he is involved has been with the Bosnian state prosecution since 2005.

“It should be mentioned that the case was registered with the Cantonal Court in Mostar, but nothing was done about it for several years. Later on it was transferred to the state prosecution as a sensitive case,” Djuliman said.

“Over the course of 15 years, 114 witnesses have been examined and 63 more still need to be examined. At this pace, unfortunately none of the families will live to see the initiation of proceedings against those suspected of shelling Konjic and murdering civilians,” he added.

Suspect leaves Bosnia after war

According to Djuliman’s findings, the state prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina knows who the Bosnian Serb Army general responsible for the shelling of Konjic is, but he is unavailable to stand trial because he is no longer in the country.

“They know exactly who he is. His name is Boro Antelj. The suspect is in Belgrade and I am convinced Serbia will not extradite him and no proceedings will be conducted against him here in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is why I proposed that the Bosnian state prosecution separated the [Antelj] case [from the case against the other alleged perpetrators] and filed an indictment against other Bosnian Serb Army members,” Djuliman said.

Boro Antelj was the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Second Hercegovina Light Infantry Brigade during the war.

Speaking by telephone from Serbia, Antelj told BIRN that no investigative authorities from Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia had invited him for interview.

“There have absolutely been no calls. Even if there are some investigations, I am not aware of them officially. I heard from my acquaintances, who were on the frontlines with me during the war, and who have already been examined, that they were inquiring about me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is all,” Antelj said.

He added that he has not visited Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the war.

“I have no intention of coming, because when I see how indictments are written in this region, I do not want to fall into a trap. I assume that, even if the Bosnian investigative authorities are conducting an investigation, it can only be on the basis of my command responsibility,” Antelj said.

He said he did not feel responsible for the civilians who were killed in Konjic and the surrounding areas, although he does not deny that these places were shelled.

“There was shelling. That is an undisputable fact. But it happened only when our positions were targeted and in accordance with the rules of war,” he insisted.

“I set up the defence lines exclusively on the territory of Serb villages. Any order for shelling must have come from the Bosnian Serb Army Supreme Command. My guiding principle was that enemy forces must not be harmed in any way once they have been defeated,” Antelj said.

After the end of the Bosnian war, Antelj moved to Serbia, where he started a business and became politically active. He served as a member of the main executive board of the conservative Democratic Party of Serbia, the DSS, although he was expelled from it two years ago.

He is now an independent councillor in the local assembly in the Serbian town of Rakovica.