By laying flowers and paying respects, the 32nd anniversary of the killing of 11 Sarajevo residents was commemorated. They were killed while waiting in line for bread in the Alipasino Polje neighborhood by a mortar shell fired from the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) in Nedzarici.
Senida Karovic, the President of the Union of Civilian War Victims of Canton Sarajevo (CS), stated that the suffering of civilians in the capital had been inadequately punished, and without the verdicts of the Hague Tribunal, no one would have been convicted for the siege of Sarajevo.
“The Prosecutor’s Office and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are doing nothing when it comes to justice,” said Karovic.
She emphasized that what hurts the victims and the citizens of Sarajevo who survived the siege the most is the fact that justice has not reached those individuals who operated as snipers, fired shells at Sarajevo, and kept its residents besieged for 1.425 days.
“It hurts, it’s the greatest pain, the greatest suffering,” said Karovic, calling on judicial institutions to prosecute those responsible for the deaths of Sarajevo residents.
In the mortar explosion on August 30th, 1992, the following individuals were killed: Rifet Bahtic, Jasmina Durakovic, Jasmin Djozo, Muniba Ganija, Nermin Gusic, Zoran Kafedzic, Sadrija Krasnici, Adnan Lingo, Nadezda Puljic, Daniel Turkalj, and Edin Uzunovic, while more than 50 citizens were seriously or lightly injured.
Sarajevo civilians, as established by the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), were attacked with sniper and artillery fire while tending their gardens, shopping at markets, or cleaning city streets. They were shot at while attending funerals, in ambulances, on trams, buses, or bicycles.
The Minister of Education of CS, Naida Hota-Muminovic, reminded of the Hague verdicts that prosecuted those responsible for the siege of Sarajevo, but noted that few people have been convicted for “so many of our fellow citizens killed and wounded.”
“Even today, 32 years later, we speak of them because it is very important, not only because of the past and the present but also for the future. It is necessary to constantly talk about it so that such a crime is never repeated,” said Hota-Muminovic.
The Hague verdicts handed down life sentences to the former political and military leaders of RS – Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic – and former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS, Stanislav Galic, for the campaign of terror against civilians through sniper and artillery attacks. The former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS, Dragomir Milosevic, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for terrorizing Sarajevo’s civilians.
During the 44-month siege, from 1992 to 1995, more than 11.000 residents, including around 1.600 children, were killed, according to association data. More than 30 years after the war ended, no indictments have been brought against those responsible for the shelling and sniper attacks on the citizens of Sarajevo, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
