First collective funeral in the Memorial Center Potočari was held in 2003, when nearly a thousand victims were buried in three phases, to be precise, 969 victims; stated the spokeswoman of the Institute for Missing Persons in BiH Lejla Čengić on the occasion of the marking of the anniversary of the first funeral in the Memorial Center Srebrenica – Potočari – Memorial and Cemetery for victims of the genocide in 1995.
According to Čengić, the largest number of victims were buried in 2003. After that, several hundreds of victims are buried on July 11 every year. The oldest victim buried so far in Potočari is Šaha Izmirlić, born in 1901, and the youngest victim is a newborn – a girl with last name Muhić.
So far, 6.377 victims have been buried in the Memorial Center Potočari. The victims are from several municipalities, majority of them being from Srebrenica, Bratunac, Vlasenica, Zvornik and Milići.
Čengić highlighted that the majority of remains buried in the Memorial Center Potočari are incomplete because they have been mostly found in secondary or displaced mass graves, in some cases even in tertiary mass graves, or on the surface of terrain, which also cause the incompleteness of bodies.
Furthermore, Čengić stated that nearly one thousand victims that have already been buried in incomplete state will be exhumed in the coming years and complemented with the subsequently found body parts.
“The genocide victims have been found on 150 different localities, of which 77 are mass graves. It is still being searched for 1.100 genocide victims,” Čengić stated.
Čengić reminded that the last mass grave was found at the dump in Kozluk, in the area of Zvornik, where 55 remains were found late last year – 15 complete and 40 incomplete remains.
The Hague Tribunal delivered the information about this mass grave to the International Commission for Missing Persons. The information consisted of satellite images, Čengić stated. Moreover, she stated that two more locations are to be checked, also based on satellite imagery.
(Source: novovrijeme.ba)
