The 33rd anniversary of the crime against Croatian civilians in the village of Grabovica, between Mostar and Jablanica, committed by members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was marked today with the laying of wreaths at the monument to civilian victims of war and a holy mass.
The President of the HDZ BiH and the Croatian National Assembly, Dragan Čović, said that it is important that even today, 33 years later, the people are still gathering to remember and pay tribute to the 33 civilians killed in Grabovica.
“The memory of our victims constantly keeps us in a way convinced that we should have been better people during the war, if that is even possible, because it is a time of destruction, suffering, expulsion and horror, such as our Grabovica, but also other execution sites of Croatian and other peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Čović.
He, among other things, said that Bosnia and Herzegovina will never function as a normal, European and civilized society until we come to terms with the past.
“It would be good if those who committed crimes in this region, who ordered and carried them out, if they have a conscience towards their children and families, would at least reveal the places where they were buried or what has already happened to the victims of this region. We will continue to come and encourage people to return here. BiH must start living as a normal state, and from some other examples these days we have seen how much remains unresolved in the minds of our people, that is, how we experience the period from 1991 to 1995,” said Čović.
President of the Association of Croatian Victims “Grabovica 93” Josip Drežnjak said that 33 years after the crime, what hurts the relatives of the murdered the most is that to this day they still do not know where the bodies of most of the victims are.
“If we had found one body every year, we would have finished with that this year, but unfortunately we didn’t. The whole story ends in 1994 when they delivered 11 bags with mortal remains to us as part of the exchange, and in those 11 bags there were someone’s feet, someone’s shins, someone’s head, and we witnessed that all those bodies were complete, so we don’t understand why they felt the need to do that,” said Drežnjak.
He pointed out that the wish all these years has been the same, that someone would come and say where the bones of the other killed are, but, he stated, that has not happened yet.
In the “Neretva 93” operation, members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina killed 33 civilians, including a four-year-old girl, Mladenka Zadro, while the oldest victim was 87-year-old Marko Marić.
Of the 33 killed, 17 are still listed as missing, only two bodies are complete, and only body parts have been found for most of the victims.
Former members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were held accountable for the crime in Grabovica before domestic courts, for individual murders, while no one was held accountable for war crimes against civilians and command responsibility.
Mustafa Hota was sentenced to nine years in prison, Enes Šakrak to ten years, while Nihad Vlahovljak, Sead Karagić and Haris Rajkić were sentenced to 13 years in prison each.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has finally acquitted the Chief of the Main Staff of the Supreme Command of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sefer Halilović, of criminal responsibility for the crime in Grabovica, Fena writes.
