Senad Medanovic survived the attack on Prhovo near Kljuc in the summer of 1992. His nineteen-year-old sister Enesa was burned alive, his niece was raped and slaughtered, three brothers were killed… 42 members of Senad’s immediate and extended family were killed, and despite the fact that many years have passed, he says that the wounds are still fresh for him.
On June 1st, 1992, 53 villagers, including 11 children, were killed in Prhovo, a village near Kljuc. That was a quarter of the inhabitants of this town at that time. The youngest victim is nine-year-old Indira Medanovic, and the oldest is 84-year-old Arif Medanovic.
The bodies of those killed were found in two mass graves. One of them was found next to the house of Senad Medanovic, one of the survivors.
“Three of my brothers were killed at the table, my brother’s daughter was 18 years old when she was raped and slaughtered, sister-in-law was slaughtered, and my sister was burned alive with three other women,” recalls Senad, who after military service in Varazdin and work in Slovenia returned to his native Kljuc and experienced the war there.
The remains of his family members, he says, were exhumed in two mass graves – next to the family house, where a total of 37 victims were found, and in Peci – 17 of them.
“My family was killed – three brothers, a sister, a niece, a sister-in-law, my uncle’s complete family, six members from my second uncle, 42 from the immediate and extended family”, says Senad, explaining that they are in his second tomb, the so-called Gypsy Valley, after the war, two brothers were found, an uncle, his son, and members of the father’s immediate family.
When he saw that the killing had begun, on June 1st, Senad fled from the Serbian army through the woods, hiding in the Sanski Most area.
Even today, he wonders how he managed to survive.
With two armed men, he sets off towards Bihac, looking for salvation. In one place he saw two girls playing.
“Twenty days before that, I experienced all the tragedy, I left the village that was slaughtered. Regardless of that fact, I couldn’t kill them. Not that I’m not brave, I am, but not to do it. I walked past them, grandfather was far away. He was mowing the grass, his equipment fell out of fear when he saw us, he was shaking. I turned to these two and said: ‘Whoever says a word to them, I will shoot him,’ and we continued on our way,” stated Senad.
A day later they were captured, and he, he says, was thinking of taking his own life. The two people he was traveling with were taken to a container, and Senad to a warehouse, where torture started.
“They took me to the police building in Kljuc for questioning. There they tortured me and, in a full bus, took me to the ‘Manjaca’ camp. On that way, wherever they saw a Serbian soldier by the side of the road, they stopped the bus and said: ‘Come in, we have a new cake,’ and I was beaten,” he says.
In the “Manjaca” camp, in the cattle barn where they were staying, he received information that his two brothers had survived and were in the same place, in another barn. As he found out, they were brought there a month before, after the shooting in Prhovo, in which his other three brothers were killed.
“When I saw the brothers in the morning, I felt as if I didn’t have a single bruise on my body,” says Senad, adding that the brothers also thought he had been killed.
In September 1995, he returned home to find the village destroyed, and his return was immortalized by photographer Ron Haviv. Senad then finds the first mass grave next to the family house, and the discovery of the second grave – triggered trauma.
Senad testified before the State Court, when in 2013, Marko Adamovic was sentenced to 22 years and Bosko Lukic to 14 years in prison for crimes committed in Kljuc in the summer of 1992. A year later, their sentences were reduced by two years each, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
