Stari Kevljani is a secondary mass grave located in the village of Kevljani, 20 kilometres from the city of Prijedor. The grave was exhumed in August 2004 by the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. DNA analysis showed that the remains of 456 individuals were buried at the site.

Stari Kevljani is one of the largest mass graves to have been discovered in the Prijedor area. The grave was 20 metres long and five metres wide and deep. Of 456 remains found there, 354 were identified.

The village of Kevljani is around four kilometres from the Omarska mine complex, where the Bosnian Serb Army had a wartime detention camp in 1992. Several other mass graves have been discovered in the same village, one of them not far from the Stari Kevljani site. 

Many of those identified from the Stari Kevljani gravesite were Bosniaks and Croats men who were detained and last seen in the Omarska camp, or in two other camps in the Prijedor municipality, Keraterm and Trnopolje. Forensic evidence showed that the cause of death in the majority of cases was gunshots, and that a number of the victims had bone fractures. A significant number of the individuals who were identified were political, administrative and religious leaders, academics and well-known public figures from the Prijedor municipality. 

Locals in Kevljani marked the gravesite with a memorial plaque engraved with the words: “At this site in 2004, the largest mass grave in Bosanska Krajina, Stari Kevljani, was found with a total of 456 innocent victims from the Prijedor municipality.” The gravesite is located in a meadow in the village, next to a house.

A witness at the trial of Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic trial testified that torture and killings happened daily in the Omarska camp. Up to 6,000 people were held at Omarska camp while it was open in 1992, over a period of three months. Mass executions also started at the end of July 1992. Detainees were forced to clean the areas where people were killed and load their bodies onto trucks to be taken away. 

The camp was closed on August 21, 1992 after visiting British journalists who exposed the inhumane conditions and war crimes in the camp. The detainees were then transferred to other camps in the area. According to the Regional Union of Associations of Detainees from the Banja Luka Region, around 700 people held at the Omarska camp died, although not all of them were killed inside the camp itself. 

The Hague Tribunal has convicted 11 people of committing crimes at detention camps in the Prijedor area, and the Bosnian state court has convicted four more. Zeljko Mejakic, the highest-ranking official at the Omarska detention camp, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for crimes against humanity.

Prijedor is the area with the largest number of convicted war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A total of 37 Bosnian Serbs have been found guilty of committing crimes in the area and have been sentenced to a total of 617 years in prison. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia gave Milomir Stakic, wartime president of the Serb-controlled Prijedor municipality Crisis Staff, the highest sentence for crimes in Prijedor – 40 years in prison.

The Tomasica mass grave was discovered by the Bosnian authorities in September 2013, close to a large mining complex, approximately 15 to 20 kilometres south-east of the city of Prijedor.  An area of 70 metres by 120 metres was excavated over 79 days. The remains of 435 people were found; 274 were identified. It was one of the single largest mass graves to be found in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The remains were mostly those of war victims who were killed in various places around Prijedor from 1992 to 1995. 

The location of the mass grave remains unmarked, even though it lies in a populated area, some 15 minutes’ drive from Prijedor. Close to the gravesite are a number of houses and a football pitch. Before the war, the area was owned by the state and used by the Ljubija mining company. 

The exact location of the mass grave was revealed to the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute by a former Bosnian Serb soldier who took part in the cover-up of the killings, but wanted to stay anonymous. The bodies were mostly those of Bosniaks, most of whom were killed in the city of Prijedor, the village of Biscani or nearby Keraterm and Omarska prison camps, then loaded onto trucks and dumped in pits at the Tomasica site, some of which were as deep as nine metres. Twenty-nine of the bodies found at Tomasica were those people killed in the infamous ‘Room 3’ at the Keraterm camp in 1992.

The Tomasica mass grave is mostly a primary mass grave which initially contained many more than 435 bodies. During the 1990s, more than 350 of the bodies were dug up and buried again in other locations, including a pit in Jakarina Kosa, 40 kilometres from Tomasica, in the second attempt at a cover-up. 

Before the main discovery in 2013, there were several other attempts to find bodies of war victims around the Tomasica mine. In 2004, the remains of 24 people were found, while two years later, ten bodies were discovered. 

A further attempt was made in July 2020 when the authorities launched an exhumation acting on information from a local Serb, but no new discoveries were made. 

Prijedor is the area with the largest number of convicted war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A total of 37 Bosnian Serbs have been found guilty of committing crimes in the area and have been sentenced to a total of 617 years in prison. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia gave Milomir Stakic, wartime president of the Serb-controlled Prijedor municipality Crisis Staff, the highest sentence for crimes in Prijedor – 40 years in prison.

Liplje 2 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Liplje, eight kilometres south-west of the city of Zvornik. The site was exhumed in August 1998 by a team from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY.   The remains of 191 people were found; 163 were identified.

The DNA analysis showed connections between this secondary gravesite and a disturbed primary gravesite at Petkovci Dam. A forensics report by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY on Srebrenica exhumations said that this means that the remains of one individual were found in at least two different graves. The investigation also showed DNA connections between the site and four more gravesites in the same area. This indicates that remains that were dug up and removed from the primary mass grave at Petkovci Dam were transported to Liplje, 20 kilometres away. 

The gravesite is located on a meadow, surrounded by a few houses and a small bridge, and is close to the Liplje 1 gravesite. Next to the gravesite there are two memorial plaques, one honouring the Bosniaks who were held in a detention camp in the village in 1992, and the other commemorating people who were killed in the villages of Snagovo, Liplje, Josanica, Sumari, Sultanovici and Novo Selo between 1992 and 1995. The gravesite itself remains unmarked. 

On July 14, 1995, Bosnian Serb Army and police personnel transported approximately 1,000 Bosniak men from Srebrenica from detention sites in and around Bratunac to a school at Petkovci, ten kilometres from Zvornik. On July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, Bosnian Serb troops and police assaulted and shot men being detained at the school.

Around July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, personnel from the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade including drivers and trucks from the Sixth Infantry Battalion transported the surviving Bosniak men from the school at Petkovci to an area below the Petkovci Dam. They were then summarily executed by Bosnian Serb Army soldiers and police with automatic weapons. In the morning of July 15, personnel from the Zvornik Brigade’s Engineering Company, working with other individuals and units, used excavators and other heavy equipment to bury the victims while the executions continued.

A man who hid beneath dead bodies to avoid execution at the dam told the trial of former Bosnian Serb Army general Ratko Mladic at the ICTY that when he was brought to Petkovci, the field under the dam was “already covered in bodies”. The witness, who testified under the codename RM-253, said he dropped to the ground as soon as soldiers opened fire on his group and hid his head underneath the legs of some prisoners who were already dead, hoping to survive.

While RM-253 and another survivor were hiding, they saw “a truck which was collecting bodies and loading them onto a tractor, which then transported them away from the killing field”. 

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes. 

Liplje 4 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Liplje, eight kilometres south-west of the city of Zvornik. The site was exhumed in October and November 2001 by the Bosnian Federal Commission for Missing Persons.  The remains of 305 people were found; 269 were identified.

The DNA analysis showed connections between this secondary gravesite and a disturbed primary gravesite at Petkovci Dam. A forensics report by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY on Srebrenica exhumations said that this means that the remains of one individual were found in at least two different graves. The investigation also showed DNA connections between the site and four more gravesites in the same area. This indicates that remains that were dug up and removed from the primary mass grave at Petkovci Dam were transported to Liplje, 20 kilometres away. 

The Liplje 4 gravesite is located on a meadow, next to a road and a house that was destroyed during the war. The site remains unmarked. 

On July 14, 1995, Bosnian Serb Army and police personnel transported approximately 1,000 Bosniak men from Srebrenica from detention sites in and around Bratunac to a school at Petkovci, ten kilometres from Zvornik. On July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, Bosnian Serb troops and police assaulted and shot men being detained at the school.

Around July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, personnel from the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade including drivers and trucks from the Sixth Infantry Battalion transported the surviving Bosniak men from the school at Petkovci to an area below the Petkovci Dam. They were then summarily executed by Bosnian Serb Army soldiers and police with automatic weapons. In the morning of July 15, personnel from the Zvornik Brigade’s Engineering Company, working with other individuals and units, used excavators and other heavy equipment to bury the victims while the executions continued.

A man who hid beneath dead bodies to avoid execution at the dam told the trial of former Bosnian Serb Army general Ratko Mladic at the ICTY that when he was brought to Petkovci, the field under the dam was “already covered in bodies”. The witness, who testified under the codename RM-253, said he dropped to the ground as soon as soldiers opened fire on his group and hid his head underneath the legs of some prisoners who were already dead, hoping to survive.

While RM-253 and another survivor were hiding, they saw “a truck which was collecting bodies and loading them onto a tractor, which then transported them away from the killing field”. 

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes. 

Liplje 7 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Liplje, eight kilometres south-west of the city of Zvornik. The site was exhumed in September and October 2005 by the Bosnian Federal Commission for Missing Persons.  The remains of 482 people were found; 113 were identified.

The DNA analysis showed connections between this secondary gravesite and a disturbed primary gravesite at Petkovci Dam. A forensics report by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY on Srebrenica exhumations said that this means that the remains of one individual were found in at least two different graves. The investigation also showed DNA connections between the site and four more gravesites in the same area. This indicates that remains that were dug up and removed from the primary mass grave at Petkovci Dam were transported to Liplje, 20 kilometres away. 

The gravesite is located next to a road, 500 meters from the Liplje 1 mass grave. The site is surrounded by a few houses and woods. 

On July 14, 1995, Bosnian Serb Army and police personnel transported approximately 1,000 Bosniak men from Srebrenica from detention sites in and around Bratunac to a school at Petkovci, ten kilometres from Zvornik. On July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, Bosnian Serb troops and police assaulted and shot men being detained at the school.

Around July 14, 1995 and in the early morning hours of July 15, personnel from the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade including drivers and trucks from the Sixth Infantry Battalion transported the surviving Bosniak men from the school at Petkovci to an area below the Petkovci Dam. They were then summarily executed by Bosnian Serb Army soldiers and police with automatic weapons. In the morning of July 15, personnel from the Zvornik Brigade’s Engineering Company, working with other individuals and units, used excavators and other heavy equipment to bury the victims while the executions continued.

A man who hid beneath dead bodies to avoid execution at the dam told the trial of former Bosnian Serb Army general Ratko Mladic at the ICTY that when he was brought to Petkovci, the field under the dam was “already covered in bodies”. The witness, who testified under the codename RM-253, said he dropped to the ground as soon as soldiers opened fire on his group and hid his head underneath the legs of some prisoners who were already dead, hoping to survive.

While RM-253 and another survivor were hiding, they saw “a truck which was collecting bodies and loading them onto a tractor, which then transported them away from the killing field”. 

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes. 

Cancari Road 5 is one of the largest clandestine grave sites found near the River Kamenica in the Zvornik municipality in north-east Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The remains of 506 people were found, most of them male, in the exhumation carried out from August to October 2002 by the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute, assisted by the International Commission on Missing Persons. 

The mass grave is located on the right side of the road that leads through the village of Donja Kamenica. It is a large grass field with one abandoned house nearby. It is also one of the few mass graves in the country that has been marked with a small gravestone listing the number of victims and the year they were killed. 

Most of the victims buried at Cancari Road 5 are Bosniaks from Srebrenica who were killed in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces.  

Cancari Road 5 is also a secondary mass grave. Some bodies of Bosniaks from Srebrenica were initially buried close to execution sites in municipalities of Zvornik and Bratunac, but then dug up again and taken by the Bosnian Serb Army to more remote locations. At the time of the cover-up operation, the area around Kamenica was abandoned, as most of the Bosniaks who lived there before the war had either been killed or expelled. However, after the end of the war in November 1995, Bosniak refugees started to return and rebuild their houses, and they were the first to raise the alarm about human remains that they found in their yards and fields. 

The series of gravesites known as Cancari Road in the Bosnian village of Kamenica were all discovered in 1998 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. 

The Cancari Road 4 site was exhumed by the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute from August to September 2008, yielding the remains of 362 people, mostly the victims of genocide from Srebrenica. 

The gravesite lies to the right of the River Kamenica, next to a road, and is marked with a black plaque that carries the name of the mass grave and a verse from the Quran: “Think not of those who are slain on the path of Allah as dead. No, they are alive, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord; they rejoice in the bounty provided by Allah.”

When it was discovered, it was 15 metres long, three metres wide and 1.6 to 2.5 metres deep, situated on a slight slope in a grassy area.

According to the International Commission on Missing Persons, the remains found were mostly those of males, and the grave contained both young and older victims. Also found were tobacco cases, digital watches, cartridge cases and bullets. 

The Cancari Road 4 is a secondary mass grave – victims were removed from the primary mass graves in Kozluk and Branjevo and transported here by Bosnian Serb forces in the autumn of 1995 as an attempt to cover up the massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica. 

Investigators from the ICTY established that at least one person whose remains were found at the Cancari Road 4 site had been killed in the Pilica Cultural Centre in July 1995. At least 500 people were detained at the cultural centre and then executed in the main hall by Bosnian Serb forces. There were no survivors. 

Their bodies were subsequently moved to nearby Branjevo Farm and a few months afterwards to other locations across Bosnia, including Cancari Road. The Pilica Cultural Centre is now abandoned and still has visible traces of the massacre, including bullet holes. 

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes.

There are at least 13 known secondary mass graves in the area designated as Cancari Road in the Bosnian municipality of Zvornik, close to the border with Serbia. The grave sites designated Cancari Road 1 to Cancari Road 12 were excavated in 1998 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, and multiple human remains were found in each. The last mass grave, designated Cancari Road 13, was located by the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute. Among locals, the area is known as the ‘Valley of Graves’.

The exhumation at Cancari Road 2, conducted in August 2002 by the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute and the International Commission on Missing Persons, found 224 remains, mostly victims of the Srebrenica genocide.  

The grave is located at the very beginning of the road that leads to the village of Kamenica from the city of Zvornik, right next to a small bridge over the River Kamenica. It is also close to several houses – mostly those of Bosniaks who returned to their homes after the war. 

Most of the mass graves alongside Cancari Road were discovered by villagers who mainly work in agriculture and recovered bones while cultivating their fields and yards. 

The Cancari Road 2 site, like all the other Cancari Road graves, is a secondary mass grave. War victims were reburied here in the autumn of 1995 in an attempt to cover up the killings of Bosniak men and boys in the Srebrenica genocide. Genocide victims’ bodies were initially buried near execution sites in Srebrenica, Pilica, Kozluk, Bratunac and Zvornik in the days after July 15, 1995. Two months later, Bosnian Serb forces were ordered to remove the bodies and rebury them in more remote and hard-to-find locations.

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes and cover-up operations.

Cancari Road 6 is one of a series of 13 mass graves found alongside a six-kilometre stretch of road by the River Kamenica in the municipality of Zvornik in north-east Bosnia and Herzegovina. Like all the 13 mass graves found in the area, the gravesite is a secondary mass grave.

An exhumation by the International Commission for Missing Persons, the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute and the local prosecution from the town of Tuzla from October to December 2008 revealed that the grave contained the remains of 881 people, most of them victims of killings after the fall of the town of Srebrenica in 1995.  

The grave site was 17 metres in length, around 36 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, situated on a slope down to the River Kamenica, near an abandoned house.

Most of the victims were male and alongside the bodies, a number of objects were found including watches, cigarette cases, lighters and combs.

They were reburied here in the autumn of 1995 during a cover-up operation aimed at concealing the bodies of those killed at mass execution sites in Kozluk and Branjevo. 

After the fall of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces, captured Bosniaks were brought by buses to Branjevo Military Farm for execution. Survivors described being led in groups to a meadow littered with corpses and told to turn their backs. 

On July 16, 1995, soldiers at Branjevo Military Farm were ordered to go some five kilometres east to the Pilica Cultural Centre to kill around 500 more Bosniaks who were being detained there. The inside of the Pilica Cultural Centre was described as having corpses “piled up on each other, just lying there scattered all over the place”; the bodies – two of which were female – were all wearing civilian clothes. The victims were then buried at Branjevo Military Farm and later reburied in secondary mass graves, including those at Cancari Road.

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes.

The Cancari Road 3 mass grave is one of a series of mass graves that were found along a road in the village of Kamenica in north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, close to the border with Serbia.   

This secondary mass grave was the first of 13 mass graves found near the River Kamenica and exhumed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in May and June 1998. The remains of 155 people were found, most of them victims of Srebrenica genocide. 

The mass grave lies on the right side of the village road, unmarked, between several houses and agricultural land, some 15 minutes’ drive from the city of Zvornik. 

The bodies found in the grave are believed to have been killed at the Kozluk execution site, some 30 kilometres from Kamenica. 

The victims, mostly men captured by Bosnian Serb forces during their Operation Krivaja to seize Srebrenica, were brought to Kozluk, shot and buried in a nearby gravesite, close to the Vitinka water and soft drinks bottling factory. Soil and glass was dumped over the bodies, which were then dug up again later in the autumn of 1995 and reburied along the Cancari Road in an attempted cover-up. 

When investigators found the Cancari Road 3 mass grave, they also found pieces of broken green bottle glass, labels from the Vitinka factory and soil of a similar texture to that found at Kozluk.

The killings at Kozluk and the cover-up operations formed part of numerous Srebrenica cases both before national and international courts that found Bosnian Serb political leaders and members of their army and police forces responsible for atrocities committed after the fall of Srebrenica. 

So far, the ICTY and domestic courts in the Balkans have sentenced a total of 47 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes.