To date, 465 victims of the past war have been exhumed in the area of Mostar from several mass and individual graves, in the past year 87 exhumations were carried out in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 45 remains were exhumed, while at the national level the search for 7,586 victims of the past war is still ongoing, confirmed the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
When it comes to the search for missing persons in our country, the biggest challenge is the lack of accurate information about the locations of the graves where the remains of the victims are still being sought.
“Such information is increasingly difficult to come by because those who have this information and who know where the individual, joint and mass graves are choose to remain silent and hide the truth despite the fact that more than 30 years have passed since the crimes were committed, thus prolonging the suffering and agony of the families who are searching for their loved ones,” said Emza Fazlić, public relations expert of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH.
She adds that the work in the field is extremely complex, taking into account the passage of time and the change in the configuration of the land, and that, among others, is another aggravating circumstance in the process of searching for missing persons.
Skeletal remains that were discovered a few days ago at the Potoci site near Mostar during construction work are not within the competence of the Institute because, as he says, they are older remains, not from the past war but from an earlier period.
“This was determined by the Institute’s investigators together with the anthropologists of the International Commission for Missing Persons, and after going out into the field during the discovery of the remains. According to the information obtained, there used to be a cemetery at the mentioned location, so it is assumed that these remains were located in that place for that reason,” says Fazlić.
She adds that due to the fact that these are old skeletal remains, the Institute is not competent, and will not act in this case, that is, there will be no exhumation, Fena news agency writes.
