The Cancari Road 1 grave is one of the 13 gravesites that were found along the road between the town of Zvornik and the village of Kamenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

The gravesite was initially discovered in 1998 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY and its chief archaeologist, Professor Richard Wright. However, the remains were only exhumed some ten years later by the Bosnian Institute for Missing Persons. The exhumation in July 2009 yielded the bodies of 53 people. The Institute for Missing Persons also renamed the gravesite Kamenica 14.

The mass grave is unmarked, on the right side of the road between a meadow and a river.

Most of the victims whose remains were found were killed after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Cancari Road 1 grave site, like all the other sites around the village of Kamenica, is a secondary mass grave. 

The ICTY investigation established that people found at the Cancari Road 1 site were killed in July 1995 in the nearby town of Kozluk, buried there and later reburied in Kamenica.

After the executions, the victims killed in Kozluk were covered with soil rather than being buried in pits. They were found wearing civilian clothes. Thousands of broken green glass bottles had been dumped before the execution happened, as well as labels from the nearby Vitinka water and soft drinks bottling factory, and this was one of the factors that helped to link the primary mass grave at Kozluk to the secondary mass graves at Cancari Road 1, Cancari Road 2, Cancari Road 3,  Cancari Road 7 and Cancari Road 13, as well as DNA analysis, soil analysis and the large number of bodies that had ligatures and blindfolds. 

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 four life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes.

The mass grave in the Gorice neighbourhood of the Bosnian city of Brcko was found in 2006 and it is the largest clandestine gravesite in the area. The Gorice mass grave contained 277 human remains, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons. So far, 136 individuals have been identified from the remains that were exhumed. 

The Gorice gravesite is located some ten kilometres north of the city, right on the banks of the River Sava. It is an abandoned field, marked with one plaque put up by locals, which says that remains of the Bosniaks and Croats killed in the area from 1992 to 1995 were found at the location. 

It is a secondary grave, and was dug by Bosnian Serb forces in order to conceal the bodies of those killed around the Brcko area at the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and initially buried elsewhere. According to forensic reports, the mass grave was four metres deep.

From April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces fought to gain control over Brcko, which lies near the border with Croatia. With the assistance of local Serb authorities, Bosnian Serb troops expelled Croat and Bosniak residents from their homes and held them at detention centres where many were killed, tortured, beaten or otherwise mistreated.

Captives were illegally detained and abused at the Brcko police building, the local hospital, the Luka prison camp, the former Partizan sports building, and the Yugoslav People’s Army barracks. The crimes were committed by members of military, police and paramilitary forces.

Some of the executions were filmed by foreign journalists and caused worldwide condemnation. After that, the cover-up operation to hide victims’ bodies started.

Many court witnesses said that the bodies of those killed were transported from the detention centres to mass graves using trucks from the local Bimes meat factory. Near the factory, according to several witnesses, there was a primary mass grave used to dump the bodies during the early years of the war. Later, as the bodies started to pile up, they were dug up and re-buried in Gorice. Many witnesses also said a number of bodies were thrown into the River Sava.

Two Bosnian Serb fighters, Goran Jelisic and Ranko Cesic, pleaded guilty to crimes in Brcko at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 

Jelisic, who described himself as the ‘Serbian Adolf’, was a senior guard at the Luka detention camp. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, and the Hague court’s verdict described his behaviour as “repugnant, bestial and sadistic”. Cesic, who was a police officer, was sentenced to 18 years for murder and rape. 

At the Bosnian state court, there is also an ongoing case against Djordje Ristanic, who was president of the Brcko wartime presidency and is charged with taking part in a joint criminal enterprise to persecute Bosniak and Croat civilians in the area from April to December 1992.

Ristanic is also charged with the rape and sexual abuse of both men and women at detention centres in Brcko and with the destruction of mosques in the area.

The Ogradice mass grave was discovered in 2003, some 20 kilometres from the town of Vlasenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lying up in the hills, at the end of an often inaccessible road and in a deep forest, the mass grave remains unmarked. 

Forensic teams identified 155 bodies that were found at the gravesite, most of them Bosniak victims of crimes committed in the Vlasenica area in 1992 and 1993. 

According to the University of Sarajevo Institute for Researching Crimes against Humanity and International Law, a total of 12 mass graves have been found in the Vlasnica municipality containing victims of violence in 1992 and 1993. A total of 436 bodies were discovered at these locations, 232 of them at the Ogradice grave. 

Killings, torture and rape in Vlasenica were the subject of one of the first cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where Dragan Nikolic, who commanded the infamous detention camp Susica in the town, was the first indictee in 1994. 

Nikolic pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity that included persecution on political, racial and religious grounds, murder, sexual violence and torture at Susica. Many of the Susica victims were found in the Ogradice mass grave. 

Nikolic, alias Jenki, subjected Bosniaks and other non-Serb detainees to murder, rape and torture and participated in creating and maintaining an atmosphere of terror in the camp, the verdict found.

Nikolic punched, kicked and beat the detainees with weapons such as wooden bats, iron bars, axe handles, rifle butts, metal knuckles, metal pipes, truncheons and rubber tubing with lead inside. The injuries inflicted during the beatings were sometimes fatal. 

He also personally removed and facilitated the removal of female detainees from the hangar where they were interned, in the knowledge that they were being taken away to be raped or sexually abused. He told the UN court that he felt “shame and disgrace” about what he did.

Between late May and October 1992, as many as 8,000 Bosniak civilians and other non-Serbs from Vlasenica and the surrounding villages had been detained at the Susica camp. The building was severely overcrowded and living conditions were deplorable. 

Survivors and families of the Susica victims organise an annual commemorative march from the village of Turajlici to the mass graves at Ogradice and Debelo Brdo, ending in front of the former camp. 

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.