Cancari Road 7 (also known as Kamenica 7) is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Kamenica, 50 kilometres from the town of Srebrenica and some 13 kilometres from the city of Zvornik. There are 13 secondary mass graves in the Kamenica area containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres.

The Cancari Road 7 gravesite was exhumed in October 2002 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons, monitored bу the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. The remains of 200 individuals were found; 97 were identified. 

DNA analysis showed connections between this secondary gravesite and the disturbed primary gravesite at Kozluk. According to the ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica-related exhumations, this means that parts of the remains of some individuals were found at both the Kozluk and Cancari Road 7 sites. The ICTY’s investigation also showed DNA connections between this site and four more gravesites in the Kamenica area (Cancari Road 1, 2, 3 and 13). This indicates that remains that were dug up from the primary mass grave in Kozluk were transported to these secondary Cancari Road sites in Kamenica, 30 kilometres away. 

The gravesites in Kamenica were discovered either in the yards of houses which belonged to Bosniaks, or in meadows next to the road. Cancari Road 7 is located in one of these yards, next to a crossroads and the local mosque. The site is marked with a memorial plaque dedicated to the victims of Srebrenica. Locals in Kamenica have marked several of the gravesites in the area with memorial plaques honouring Srebrenica victims, although some still remain unmarked. 

According to the ICTY’s report on forensic evidence and DNA connections, the Kozluk primary mass grave, where some of the Srebrenica massacre victims were buried, contained a total of 825 individuals. 

The ICTY judgment in the trial of Dragan Jokic, Chief of Engineering for the Zvornik Brigade, and Vidoje Blagojevic, commander of the Bratunac Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, said that on or about July 15 or 16, 1995, Bosnian Serb Army military personnel, under the command and control of commanders Ratko Mladic, Radislav Krstic and others, transported approximately 500 Bosniak males to an isolated place near Kozluk, which was inside the Zvornik Brigade’s zone of responsibility. They were then executed by Bosnian Serb military personnel. On or about July 16, 1995, military personnel from the Zvornik Brigade’s Engineering Company, again controlled by Mladic, Krstic and others, buried the victims in a mass grave at the site. Jokic assisted in the planning, monitoring, organising and carrying out of the burials.

Blagojevic was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder and persecution of Bosniaks, including those executed at Kozluk. Jokic was sentenced to nine years in prison for the murders of Bosniaks at locations including Kozluk, and for providing engineering resources and personnel to dig graves for the victims.

The ICTY’s trial chamber also found that Vujadin Popovic, chief of security with the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, knew about the operation to kill the Bosniaks, and organised it with Ljubisa Beara, chief of security with the Bosnian Serb Army’s main headquarters, and Drago Nikolic, a security officer with the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade. Popovic was present when the executions were carried out at Kozluk, as well as at another killing site in Orahovac. Popovic, Beara and Nikolic were all convicted by the ICTY of involvement in the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica.

Srecko Acimovic, commander of the Bosnian Serb Army Zvornik Brigade’s Second Battalion, acting on orders received from the Zvornik Brigade’s command, provided ammunition and issued an order to transport the prisoners to the banks of the Drina River in Kozluk, where they were killed and buried. Acimovic was sentenced by the Bosnian state court to nine years in prison for assisting the genocide.

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 12 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Kamenica, 50 kilometres from the town of Srebrenica and some 13 kilometres from the city of Zvornik. There are 13 secondary mass graves in the Kamenica area containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Cancari Road 12 mass grave was exhumed in May 1998 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. The remains of 174 people were found; 149 were identified.

DNA analysis conducted by the International Commission on Missing Persons showed connections between the secondary gravesite at Cancari Road 11 and the disturbed primary gravesite at Branjevo. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that parts of the remains of some individuals were found at both the Branjevo and Cancari Road 12 sites.

The ICTY’s investigation also showed DNA connections between the Cancari Road 12 site and seven more gravesites in the same area (Cancari Road 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11). This indicates that as part of an attempted cover-up by Bosnian Serb forces, remains were dug up from the primary mass grave at Branjevo and moved to the village of Kamenica, 45 kilometres away. The other Cancari Road gravesites have been linked by DNA analysis to a primary grave at Kozluk, where Srebrenica massacre victims were also buried.

According to the ICTY’s report, the primary mass grave at Branjevo mass grave contained a total of 1,751 individuals.

The gravesites in Kamenica were discovered either in the yards of houses which belonged to Bosniaks, or in meadows next to the road. Cancari Road 12 is located in a meadow, next to a house and a corn field. The site remains unmarked. However, locals in Kamenica have marked several of the other gravesites in the area with memorial plaques honouring Srebrenica victims. 

Forensic reports and witness testimonies at the ICTY, including testimony from people who were part of the killing squads, confirmed that most of the victims found in the Branjevo grave were killed at the Pilica Cultural Centre by Bosnian Serb forces in mid-July 1995. 

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.

Cancari Road 11 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Kamenica, 50 kilometres from the town of Srebrenica and some 13 kilometres from the city of Zvornik. There are 13 secondary mass graves in the Kamenica area containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Cancari Road 11 grave was exhumed between August and September 2001 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons. The remains of 242 people were found; 122 were identified.

DNA analysis conducted by the International Commission on Missing Persons showed connections between the secondary gravesite at Cancari Road 11 and the disturbed primary gravesite at Branjevo. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that parts of the remains of some individuals were found at both the Branjevo and Cancari Road 11 sites.

The ICTY’s investigation also showed DNA connections between the Cancari Road 11 site and seven more gravesites in the same area (Cancari Road 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12). This indicates that as part of an attempted cover-up by Bosnian Serb forces, remains were dug up from the primary mass grave at Branjevo and moved to the village of Kamenica, 45 kilometres away. The other Cancari Road gravesites have been linked by DNA analysis to a primary grave at Kozluk, where Srebrenica massacre victims were also buried.

According to the ICTY’s report, the primary mass grave at Branjevo mass grave contained a total of 1,751 individuals.

The gravesites in Kamenica were discovered either in the yards of houses which belonged to Bosniaks, or in meadows next to the road. Cancari Road 11 is located in a meadow, surrounded by woods and houses. The site remains unmarked. However, locals in Kamenica have marked several of the other gravesites in the area with memorial plaques honouring Srebrenica victims. 

Forensic reports and witness testimonies at the ICTY, including testimony from people who were part of the killing squads, confirmed that most of the victims found in the Branjevo grave were killed at the Pilica Cultural Centre by Bosnian Serb forces in mid-July 1995. 

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 reberied 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.

Cancari Road 10 (also known as Kamenica 10) is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Kamenica, 50 kilometres from the town of Srebrenica and some 13 kilometres from the city of Zvornik. There are 13 secondary mass graves in the Kamenica area containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Cancari Road 10 site was exhumed between June and August 2006 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons. 1153 remains were found; 380 persons were identified.

It also showed connections between this secondary gravesite and a disturbed primary gravesite at Branjevo, where victims of Srebrenica massacres were buried. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that parts of the remains of some individuals were found at both the Kozluk and Cancari Road 10 sites.

The ICTY’s investigation also showed DNA connections between the Cancari Road 10 site and seven more gravesites in the same area (Cancari Road 4, 5, 6,8, 9, 11 and 12). This indicates that as part of an attempted cover-up by Bosnian Serb forces, remains were dug up from the primary mass grave at Branjevo and moved to the village of Kamenica, 45 kilometres away. The other Cancari Road gravesites have been linked by DNA analysis to a primary grave at Kozluk, where Srebrenica massacre victims were also buried.

According to the ICTY’s report, the primary mass grave at Branjevo mass grave contained a total of 1,751 individuals. 

The gravesites in Kamenica were discovered either in the courtyards of houses which belonged to the Bosniaks, or in meadows next to the road. Cancari Road 10 is located on a meadow surrounded by houses and next to the road. The site remains unmarked. However, locals in Kamenica have marked several of the other gravesites in the area with memorial plaques honouring Srebrenica victims. 

Forensic reports and witness testimonies at the ICTY, including testimony from people who were part of the killing squads, confirmed that most of the victims found in the Branjevo grave were killed at the Pilica Cultural Centre by Bosnian Serb forces in mid-July 1995. 

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 reberied 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.

Cancari Road 9 (also known as Kamenica 9) is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Kamenica, 50 kilometres from the town of Srebrenica and some 13 kilometres from the city of Zvornik. There are 13 secondary mass graves in the Kamenica area containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres.

The Cancari Road 9 mass grave was exhumed between October and November 2007 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons.

The remains of 616 people were found; 186 were identified.

DNA examination conducted by the International Commission on Missing Persons showed connections between this secondary gravesite and the disturbed primary gravesite at Branjevo. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that parts of the remains of some individuals were found at both the Branjevo and Cancari Road 9 sites.

The investigation also showed DNA connections between the Cancari Road 9 site and seven more gravesites in the same area (Cancari Road 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 and 12). This indicates that remains from the primary mass grave at Branjevo were dug up and transported to Kamenica, 45 kilometers away. The other Cancari Road gravesites have been linked by DNA connections to a primary grave at Kozluk. 

According to the ICTY, the Branjevo primary mass grave contained a total of 1,751 individuals. 

The gravesites in Kamenica were discovered either in the yards of houses that belonged to Bosniaks or in meadows next to the road. Cancari Road 9 is located next to the road, in a meadow. The site remains unmarked. However, locals in Kamenica have marked several of the gravesites in the area with memorial plaques honouring Srebrenica victims.

Forensic reports and witness testimonies at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, including testimony from people who were part of the killing squads, confirmed that most of the victims found in the Branjevo grave were killed at the Pilica Cultural Centre by Bosnian Serb forces in mid-July 1995. 

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.

A mass grave was discovered in 2001 at the May 13 police training centre in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, some 20 kilometres from the centre of the Serbian capital. 

The discovery was made the year after the ousting of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s authoritarian regime, which had ruled throughout the 1990s wars, and it was seen as a first sign from the new democratic government that it was ready to face up to Serbia’s role in the 1998-99 war in Kosovo, which saw 13,000 people killed and a million expelled, most of them Kosovo Albanians. 

The remains of 744 people were found at Batajnica, all of them Kosovo Albanians who were killed in spring 1999 in Kosovo by the Yugoslav Army, Serbian police and paramilitaries. Most of the victims were civilians, and included men, women, children and elderly people. Alongside their remains, forensic teams also found jewellery, pens, cigarette boxes, children’s marbles, calculators, various tickets and one piece of history homework. Although considered to be a single mass grave, Batajnica is a series of five mass graves and three related features. 

Some of the bodies had been transferred from primary gravesites and some from the killing sites in Kosovo to Belgrade in trucks over the course of three months in April, May and June 1999. The cover-up operation was a joint operation by the Serbian leadership, police, army and public utility services.  

As the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was ongoing at the same time as the cover-up, the police centre in Batajnica had been abandoned because it was feared that it would be attacked by the Western military alliance. Those involved in the cover-up hoped that the mass grave would remain secret, but traces of disturbed earth and the tyre-tracks of trucks were found. 

The personnel involved in the covert operation had a pact of secrecy, but after the Milosevic regime was ousted, many decided to speak out because they feared prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY. At the time, the ICTY had already indicted Milosevic for war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, and the charges included cover-up operations to conceal wartime crimes across the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic died before the verdict in his trial. 

Two ICTY judgments found several state, army and military officials guilty of covering up crimes by transporting war victims’ bodies from Kosovo to Serbia. They included Yugoslav Army officers Nebojsa Pavkovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and Sreten Lukic, Serbian Interior Ministry officials Sreten Lukic and Vlastimir Djordjevic, and the deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia, Nikola Sainovic.

The mass grave is still within the grounds of the police centre and is not publicly accessible. All visits need to be approved by the police and access is rarely granted. Near the mass grave, a new Serbian Orthodox Church has been built, which was seen by some as an insult to the ethnic Albanian victims. There have been calls to make Batajnica a memorial centre, but this has not happened.

The mass grave near Ovcara Farm, some five kilometres from the town of Vukovar in eastern Croatia, was discovered in 1992. The remains of 200 people were found, of whom 192 people have been identified. All of them were killed in a storage building at the farm after being seized from Vukovar hospital when the besieged town fell to the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries in November 1991.

UN officials firstly identified the Ovcara Farm mass grave in December 1992, but were not allowed to investigate. A UN mission visited the area again in 1993, but rebel Croatian Serb authorities, who controlled the area until the end of the war, again did not give them permission to investigate further.

Exhumations in the area started in August 1996 after the Croatian Serb rebel regime was ousted. The grave is ten metres long and seven metres wide and a metre and a half to two metres deep. 

Before the war, Ovcara Farm was part of VUPIK, a state-owned agricultural company, which was privatised in 2010. The farm’s territory is now part of the state-level Memorial Centre of the Homeland War. A monument dedicated to the victims was installed in December 1998 at the spot where the mass grave was found. Two hundred bushes, each symbolising one victim, were also planted at the site in their memory. The storage building in which the mass killings took place is now the Memorial Home Ovcara, which opened in 2006.

After a three-month siege, Vukovar fell on November 18, 1991. Some of the town’s defenders went into hiding at Vukovar hospital, from where Serbian forces seized some 250 people the next day and took them to Ovcara Farm. At the farm, the prisoners were beaten and tortured in the storage building, which was guarded by Yugoslav People’s Army troops.

The troops withdrew on November 20 and Serbian paramilitaries took over, continuing the beatings and torture. That evening, the paramilitaries took the captives out of the storage building in groups of 20, and executed and buried them.

A total of 12 people have been sentenced to a total of 161 years in prison for the killings at Ovcara. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia sentenced Yugoslav People’s Army colonel Mile Mrksic, commander of the First Guards Motorised Brigade and of Operational Group South, to 20 years in prison and Yugoslav People’s Army major Veselin Sljivancanin, the security officer of the First Guards Motorised Brigade and of Operational Group South, to ten years in prison. Domestic courts in Serbia convicted ten people, members of the Leva Supoderica paramilitary unit and Serb Territorial Defence fighters from Vukovar, of participating in the crime at Ovcara.

The mass grave is located in Vukovar’s New Cemetery in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar. It was exhumed in 1998 and the remains of 938 bodies were found, of which 859 have been identified. It is the biggest wartime mass grave in Croatia.

The bodies found in this mass grave are believed to be those of people killed during the three-month siege of Vukovar in 1991 by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries and after the town fell, but also those of people who died of natural causes due to difficulties getting medical treatment when the town was under Serb control.

The place where the mass grave was found is now the Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of Homeland War. It consists of 938 white marble crosses, one in memory of each victim. In October 2000, a four-metre-high bronze monument was installed in the central part of the cemetery.

The mass grave was found in 1998 when Croatia regained control over its eastern territory from rebel Serbs. It was excavated from April to July 1998.

Of the 859 individuals whose remains have been identified, 644 are Croatians, and 358 of them have been classified as civilians. This is mainly a secondary mass grave, as the remains have mainly been moved from other mass graves, or even from regular cemeteries.

The Yugoslav People’s Army and paramilitary units entered Vukovar on November 18, 1991 after an 87-day siege that devastated the town. Over 200 prisoners were subsequently executed at the nearby Ovcara Farm. Most of them were buried in a mass grave at the farm, but 13 of the Ovcara victims were found in the New Cemetery mass grave.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia did not convict anyone of crimes committed during and after the siege of Vukovar, apart from the Ovcara killings. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian Serb wartime rebel leader Goran Hadzic were indicted for persecution, forcible expulsions, murders and destruction of property during and after the siege, among other alleged crimes, but both of them died before the end of their trials.

Croatian courts have convicted a total of 20 people of crimes related to Vukovar. They were sentenced to a total of 229-and-a-half years in prison. The Higher Court in Belgrade also convicted one person and sentenced him to nine years in prison.