A citizen who wished to remain anonymous (name and surname known to the editorial staff) tells Radio Free Europe (RSE) that she received a tip that her father’s remains are located at a location about 30 kilometers from Sarajevo.
Her father, H.T., died as a soldier of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 1993 in a forest controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (RS). A few months later there was an exchange of casualties between the two armies. He was identified based on personal items and clothing. After that he was buried.
Almost 30 years later, an anonymous citizen of Serbian nationality, a former member of the RS Army, reported by phone that he had personally buried her father, and said that he would also say in which location.
“After 30 years, we still don’t have peace. Those wounds are still as alive today as they were then. We, the four children, were quite young when it all happened and it’s very shocking for us to go through it all again,” this citizen told.
BiH is searching for around 7.600 more missing persons, according to data from the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH. The International Day of Missing Persons is celebrated every year on August 30th.
Dzebrail Bajramovic voluntarily helps the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH. He says for RSE that he receives information about the missing from former soldiers of the RS Army or other citizens, who contact him anonymously.
“Some have a conscience, and some are asking for compensation for the information they have,” he adds.
He does not want to reveal the sources and ways in which he gets information. But one of them was the information he received about H.T., the father of the citizen from the beginning of the story.
He reveals to RSE that he met with the person who gave him information about the place where the body was buried.
After the DNA analysis, which will take a month, it will be known for sure if the remains found belong to H.T.
Amor Masovic, former director of the Institute for Searching for the Missing, tells RSE that the bodies buried in the war, immediately after the exchange, were not complete, and that until now there have been cases where it was found that there was a mistake during identification without DNA analysis.
“There are now more than 1.200 bodies in the morgues that can be assumed to belong to people who have been wrongly classically identified and buried. Where there is a suspicion of mistakes, it will be investigated, the Institute is working on this in cooperation with the International Commission on the Missing persons,” pointed out Masovic, who has been involved in finding missing persons for almost three decades.
Masovic appeal to everyone, if they know, to report where the remains are hidden by phone or on the website of the International Commission for Missing Persons.
At the same time, the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH has been warning for years that there is less and less relevant information and that the possibilities for finding the missing are running out.
Also, the number of false alarms is increasing, RSE writes.
E.Dz.
