Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the bread queue massacre that took place in Sarajevo on May 27, 1992.
It was a beautiful spring day – the city is under siege, but many Sarajevans still hold out hope that all this will pass soon.
There is no electricity in the city, water is running low, food reserves are dwindling. Tram traffic has been disrupted for days. Citizens are walking to get to work or to provide their families with basic supplies.
In the city center, on what was then Vase Miskina Street (now Ferhadija), citizens were standing in line for bread.
And then the criminals, the aggressors from the hills, located on Borije, fired three grenades.
26 people were killed and 108 wounded. Images of the first Sarajevo massacre, committed by members of the so-called Serbian army who surrounded the capital, went around the world.
The following were killed: Nedžad Abdija, Ismet Ašćerić, Ruždija Bektešević, Snježana Biloš, Predrag Bogdanović, Vladimir Bogunović, Vasva Čengić, Gordana Čeklić, Mirsad Fazlagić, Emina Karamustafić, Mediha Omerović, Bahrija Pilav, Mila Ruždić, Mile Ružić, Hatidža Salić, Galib Sinotic, Abdulah Sarajlić, Sulejman Sarajlić, Sreten Stamenović, Srećko Šiklić, Božica Trajeri – Pataki, Vlatko Tanacković, Srećko Tanasković, Tamara Vejzagić – Kostić, Jusuf Vladović and Izudin Zukić.
We must never forget these names and May 27, 1992.
Details of a crime for which no one has ever been held accountable…
At the same time as occupying the suburban, mostly surrounding hilly and mountainous areas of Sarajevo, members of the 4th JNA Corps (which would be transformed into the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS in mid-May 1992) began a campaign of shelling and sniping in urban areas of the city in April 1992, resulting in civilian casualties and the destruction of many residential, commercial, health, cultural and religious facilities.
The day before the massacre on Vase Miskina Street, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev was in Sarajevo and, among other things, a ceasefire was agreed upon. In accordance with this agreement, a ceasefire was to come into effect on 27 May 1992 at 6 am, and the citizens of Sarajevo were “encouraged” to line up for bread, which was delivered to a shop on Vase Miskina Street no. 5-12 was delivered at around 9:00 a.m., and dairy products were soon delivered nearby.
While the bread distribution was in progress, at 9:55 a.m., a grenade was fired at this location.
Members of the Security Services Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CSB MUP RBiH), together with an investigating judge of the Higher Court in Sarajevo, conducted an on-site investigation at the crime scene. Based on an analysis of the shell crater, they determined that it was a projectile fired from an artillery weapon, and a ballistics expert collected the data necessary to determine the direction from which the projectile came. After a forensic examination of the crime scene, ballistics experts determined that the grenade was fired from the direction of Trebević, perpendicular to the direction of Vasa Miskina Street.
Immediately after this massacre, the political and military leadership of the VRS/FRY shamefully denied responsibility for the crime on Vase Miskina Street, noting that “units of the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not open fire (…) in the wider area of Sarajevo”, which is in complete contradiction with the orders issued by Ratko Mladić to his subordinate commanders. For example, two days before the massacre on Vase Miskina Street, Mladić threatened that “there would be an earthquake in Sarajevo”, that “in one second a shell would fall on it, more than in the entire time since the fighting began”. (Ratko Mladić, 25 May 1992).
The Vase Miskina Street massacre is one of 230 instances of mass killings of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo. No one was prosecuted for this crime, and the indictment against Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić states that only “starting on or about 28 May” did the intensive shelling of Sarajevo begin, “during which civilian targets were damaged and destroyed, and several civilians were wounded”.
Therefore, the indictments do not include the period when the Vase Miskina Street massacre was committed (27 May 1992), nor is this crime mentioned in any way in the aforementioned indictments, including the ICTY verdicts in the cases of the Prosecutor’s Office vs. Karadžić and Mladić.
Fifteen days before the Vase Miskina Street massacre, Colonel Tomislav Šipčić of the Yugoslav Army was appointed to command the renamed 4th Corps of the JNA in the SRK, and he remained in this position until mid-September 1992.
