The laying of flowers marked the 31st anniversary of the crime in Cekalusa Street in Sarajevo, when five young people, including three children, died from the explosion of a shell fired from a position of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS).
On that day, the brothers Mirza and Adnan Hodzic, who were 11 and 12 years old respectively, Vedran Stimac, who was also 12 years old, and Sanela Lukacevic and Faruk Nisic were killed.
Nermina Hodzic, Mirza and Adnan’s mother, who was not at the commemoration of the anniversary of the crime due to illness, stated that every time this date comes it kills the parents of the murdered children again.
“Every gathering is shocking. There is a place to go, there is a grave for them, there is everything, so we visit it,” Hodzic said briefly.
Fikret Grabovica, president of the Association of the Parents of the Murdered Children in the Besieged Sarajevo 1992–1995, recalls how a shell fell between the mosque and the residential building and interrupted the children who were playing.
“Two children were wounded that day – Anja Stimac, Vedrana Stimac’s sister, as well as Vedrana Lukacevic, Sanela’s sister,” Grabovica stated, adding that he was particularly emotional on this day.
“Sanela Lukacevic, daughter of Nadira Lukacevic, who was my Irma’s teacher, was killed here. My Irma was killed in 1993, and then Nejra was born in 1994. And in 2001, we enrolled Nejra in the same school, ‘Musa Cazim Catic’. When we came on the first day and brought Nejra to school, luck would have it that she was assigned to Nadira Lukacevic,” said Grabovica emotionally.
The parents of the children killed in Cekalusa did not have the strength to talk to the media. The commemoration was attended by primary and secondary school students from the Centar municipality, who, accompanied by teachers, came to pay their respects to those killed. Before laying flowers, Grabovica spoke to the students present about the crimes against children during the siege of Sarajevo.
During the 44-month siege of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), according to the association’s data, more than 11.000 inhabitants were killed, including about 1.600 children.
According to the Hague verdicts, the former political and military leaders of the RS – Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, and the former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS Stanislav Galic – were sentenced to life imprisonment for the campaign of terror against civilians – sniper and artillery attacks. The former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, Dragomir Milosevic, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo, Detektor reports.
Photo: TVSA
