Due to the death – 11 years after the first criminal report – the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) ordered the suspension of the investigation against Tomislav Sipcic, the first commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Army of the Republika Srpska (SRK VRS), suspected of war crimes against the civilian population in Sarajevo, including the shelling of the maternity hospital and other massacres. Victims’ associations recalled that to date no direct perpetrator has been prosecuted for crimes in Sarajevo.
In September 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH was informed by the Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes of the Republic of Serbia that Sipcic died on July 7th in Vrbas, Serbia. The order to suspend the investigation was issued on December 14th, according to the State Prosecutor’s Office, as well as that criminal charges were filed against him in 2011 and 2015.
The former commander of the SRK, as stated in the order to suspend the investigation, was suspected of planning, encouraging, ordering, executing, or in other ways helping and supporting the planning, preparation, or execution of shelling and sniping against the civilian population of Sarajevo, during which 800 civilians were killed and approximately 1.787 civilians were wounded.
Sipcic was also suspected of ordering an artillery attack on the “Zehra Muidovic” maternity hospital on May 26th, 1992, when six babies died; then the shelling of Vaso Miskin Street, today’s Ferhadija, when 17 people died and a hundred were wounded; sniper attack on a bus with children from the Home for Abandoned Children “Ljubica Ivezic” in Nedzarici, when two children were killed; the shelling of the Town Hall, Square of Solidarity in Novi Grad, where people were killed in the line for bread, and the attack on Aerodromsko naselje in June 1992, when 38 people were killed.
Documents submitted to the BiH Prosecutor’s Office
Fikret Grabovica, president of the “Association of Parents of Murdered Children in the Besieged Sarajevo 1992-1995”, says that together with the Institute for Researching Crimes Against Humanity and International Law of the University of Sarajevo (UNSA), they submitted a criminal complaint against Sipcic with accompanying documentation, pointing out that the Prosecution had enough time and evidence to file an indictment.
“Based on the relevant documentation of the parents and their statements, we suspect that Tomislav Sipcic is responsible for the murders of around 130 children when he was the commander of the SRK. Given that many parents, for subjective and objective reasons, did not report that their children were killed, we believe that the number of children killed is much higher,” says Grabovica, who adds that he is deeply disappointed with the work of the Prosecutor’s Office.
For victims’ associations, the answers of the Prosecutor’s Office are inadequate
Grabovica recalled that even 30 years after the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH has not filed a single indictment against the direct perpetrators.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced former SRK VRS commanders Stanislav Galic to life imprisonment, and Dragomir Milosevic to 29 years in prison, for crimes against the citizens of Sarajevo. Later, former VRS General Ratko Mladic and RS President Radovan Karadzic were sentenced to life sentences for terrorizing Sarajevo – shelling and sniping.
Murat Tahirovic, president of the Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses of BiH, says that by 2017, they had filed 20 criminal charges against those responsible for the crimes committed during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995. He adds that they never received an answer from the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH about the stage of these applications.
“We are now asking the Prosecutor’s Office a question for a specific case, for a specific person – whether an indictment has been filed and, if not, why. We also asked such questions when it comes to the siege of Sarajevo. We only received verbal information over the phone. The prosecution refrains from responding in writing, because it believes that it needs to protect certain data,” points out Tahirovic, who adds that they have received information that the investigation has been suspended in certain cases, while other persons are still being investigated, Detektor reports.
E.Dz
