Hodzici Road 5

Hodzici Road 5 is a secondary mass grave, located in the village of Hodzici, some 17 kilometres north-west of the city of Zvornik. There are seven known mass graves in the area, all secondary sites. A total of 55 human remains have been exhumed in the yard of one of the local houses. 

Hodzici Road 5 site was exhumed in 1998 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY along with the Hodzici Road 3 and 4 sites.

DNA analysis carried out by the International Commission on Missing Persons showed connections between this secondary gravesite and the Lazete 1 primary gravesite (also known as Orahovac 1). According to the ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that remains of one individual were found in at least two different graves. The ICTY’s investigation showed that there were 12 DNA connections between Lazete 1 and Hodzici Road 5. This indicates that human remains were dug up at the Lazete 1 primary mass grave and transferred to Hodzici Road, some 10 kilometres away. 

Forensic analysis of soil/pollen samples, evidence and aerial images of creation/disturbance dates, further revealed that bodies from the Lazete 1 and Lazete 2 primary mass graves were dug up and reburied at secondary graves in Hodzici.  

The Hodzici Road gravesite remains unmarked, in the private yard of one of the village houses. 

ICTY verdicts found that captured Bosniak men from Srebrenica were transported on July 14, 1995 to a school in the village of Orahovac. In the early afternoon, Bosnian Serb Army Zvornik Brigade personnel under the supervision of Drago Nikolic,a security officer with the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade, and Milorad Trbic, Assistant Commander for Security with the Zvornik Brigade, then transported the captives to a nearby field, where personnel, including members of the 4th Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade, executed them with automatic weapons.

In related verdicts, the ICTY found Radislav Krstic, the Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, guilty of genocide against Bosniaks from Srebrenica – its first verdict establishing that the Srebrenica masacres constituted genocide. Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison, although the sentence was subsequently shortened to 35 years.

The ICTY also found that Ljubisa Beara, the chief of security of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Staff, was told to organise, coordinate and facilitate the detention, transportation, summary execution and burial of the Bosniak victims murdered at Orahovac. Beara was assisted by, among others, commander Vujadin Popovic, Chief of Security of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, as well as Nikolic and Trbic. 

Beara, Popovic, Nikolic and Trbic were found to have supervised, facilitated and overseen the Orahovac executions, and the ICTY convicted them of genocide. Vidoje Blagojevic, commander of the Bratunac Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder and persecution of Bosniaks in the Srebrenica area, as well as aiding and abetting the murder of Bosniaks in Bratunac. Dragan Jokic, chief of engineering of the Zvornik Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to nine years in prison for the murders of Bosniaks in Orahovac, at the Branjevo Military Farm in Pilica and in Kozluk, and for providing engineering resources and personnel to dig mass graves for the executed victims.

According to the Federal Institute for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the remains of 818 Bosniaks from Srebrenica were discovered at seven secondary gravesites on Hodzici Road.

Budak 2

The Budak 2 mass grave is located in the village of Potocari, six kilometres north-west of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and near the Budak 1 gravesite. The grave was exhumed in June and July 2007 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons, monitored by the International Commission on Missing Persons. During the exhumation, the remains of 49 people were found, most of whom were victims of the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995.

Budak 2 is a secondary mass grave, one of many in the Potocari area. Based on DNA samples taken from the remains, soil and pollen samples, as well as shell casings collected in mass graves and at execution sites, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY established the connection between this secondary grave and the primary mass grave Glogova 1, located 10.5 kilometres away.

Glogova 1 initially contained many more remains, but in a subsequent cover-up operation by Bosnian Serb forces in the autumn of 1995, bodies were transported from there to other burial locations, including Budak 1, according to the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute. The operation to conceal the crimes was described by the ICTY as “an organised and comprehensive effort… to hide the executions by exhuming the bodies from primary mass graves and reburying them in secondary graves”.

The ICTY established that the secondary mass graves in the Potocari area are not only linked to the primary mass graves, but are also interlinked at various levels. In the case of the Budak 2 gravesite, the remains of several individuals found there were also found in other graves besides the primary site at Glogova 1: at Zeleni Jadar 4, Zeleni Jadar 5 and Zeleni Jadar 6. Some of the victims whose remains were initially buried at Glogova 1, and then dug up by Bosnian Serb forces and reburied at Budak 1 as part of an attempted cover-up, were reburied yet again at Budak 2.

Most of the remains found in the Budak 2 mass grave were victims who were shot at a farm in Kravica, where on July 13, 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers executed 1,313 Bosniak men from Srebrenica. Automatic weapons, hand grenades, and other weapons were used to kill the men inside the warehouse.

Today, the Budak 2 mass grave, on a meadow by a road, is unmarked. In 2011, a few dozen metres away from the Budak 1 and Budak 2 gravesites, local Serbs started building an Orthodox church. This created tensions with the local Bosniak population, but the church was built and consecrated three years later.

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.

Budak 1

The Budak 1 mass grave is located in the village of Potocari, six kilometres north-west of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The grave was exhumed in July 2005 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons, monitored by the International Commission on Missing Persons. 

This secondary mass grave is located within an existing Muslim graveyard in Potocari. The exhumation yielded the remains of 54 people, most of them killed during the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995. 

The remains that were found, DNA samples and other evidence, including soil and pollen samples, as well as shell casings in mass graves and at execution sites, proved the connection between this secondary grave and the primary mass grave Glogova 1.

Glogova 1 initially contained many more remains, but in a subsequent cover-up operation by Bosnian Serb forces in the autumn of 1995, bodies were transported from there to other burial locations, including Budak 1, according to the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute. The operation to conceal the crimes was described by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY as “an organised and comprehensive effort… to hide the executions by exhuming the bodies from primary mass graves and reburying them in secondary graves”.

Based on DNA connections, the ICTY established that the secondary mass graves in the Potocari area are not only linked to the primary mass graves, but are also interlinked at various levels. In the case of the Budak 1 gravesite, the remains of several individuals found there were also found in other graves besides the primary site at Glogova 1: Budak 2, Zeleni Jadar 4, Zeleni Jadar 5 and Zeleni Jadar 6.

ICTY forensic teams also established that some of the remains found in the Budak 1 mass grave were victims who were shot at a farm in Kravica, where on July 13, 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers executed 1,313 Bosniak men from Srebrenica. Automatic weapons, hand grenades, and other weapons were used to kill the men inside the warehouse.

Today, there is still a Muslim cemetery at the Budak 1 location, as well as a memorial plaque in honour of the victims found in the mass grave. In 2011, a few dozen metres away from the Budak 1 and Budak 2 gravesites, local Serbs started building an Orthodox church. This created tensions with the local Bosniak population, but the church was built and consecrated three years later.

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.

Slap 1

A mass grave was discovered in 2000 on the banks of the River Drina in the village of Slap, four kilometres from the town of Zepa and 50 kilometres from the city of Visegrad.

A total of 124 bodies and one body part were discovered at the site, which was exhumed in October 2000 by the Bosnian Missing Persons Commission and named Slap 1. A second grave, named Slap 2, was found a few kilometres downstream, where a further seven bodies were buried. To this day a total of 119 people were identified. 

Information about the location of the gravesite was given by one of the local Bosniak men who buried the bodies, which were retrieved from the River Drina after they floated downstream from the direction of Visegrad.

From mid-May 1992 to 1995, local residents in Slap saw hundreds of bodies floating down the river from the direction of Visegrad. In order to retrieve the bodies, they usually used rowing boats to pull them to the riverbank. One of the local men, Mevsud Poljo, told the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY that he buried more than 150 bodies on the riverbank.

Before burying the bodies, locals would search for any identification documents and write down the description of the victims’ clothes and other details. When they first started to discover the bodies, they would contact the local police in the town of Rogatica and a forensic team would come and inspect the bodies. Later on, as the war progressed, with electricity and telephone lines not working, it was not possible to inform the police any more. Bodies that were deemed to have decomposed too much to retrieve were left in the river. 

Autopsies conducted by the International Commission on Missing Persons confirmed that in most of the cases, the cause of death was gunshots. Eighty-seven per cent of the bodies were Bosniak men, with a smaller proportion of women. The majority were aged between 30 and 60, but one victim was a child who was between seven and 12 years old at the time of death. In a number of cases, ligatures were found with the bodies. Many of the bodies had blunt force traumas – injuries caused by beating before death. 

Today the Slap 1 gravesite is marked with a memorial plaque which was installed by the local community.

Each year in June, victims’ families and missing persons associations commemorate the wartime killings of 3,000 people in the Visegrad area with a ceremony at which they throw roses into the River Drina. 

Nineteen people have so far been convicted of committing war crimes in the Visegrad area by the ICTY, the Bosnian state court and the Sarajevo Cantonal Court. Of these 19 war criminals, nine were convicted of rape and sexual abuse. A further 12 suspects are currently on trial at the Bosnian state court, and five more at Belgrade Higher Court in Serbia.

Those who have been convicted have so far were given a total of 246 years in prison, while Milan Lukic, who was the leader of the White Eagles or Avengers, a Bosnian Serb paramilitary group, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ICTY for participating in the murders and expulsions of Bosniak civilians in Visegrad in 1992 and 1993. The Bosnian prosecution has subsequently charged Lukic with crimes against passengers kidnapped from a train at Strpci railway station in February 1993 and then killed.

According to the Bosnian Missing Persons Institute, 920 people went missing from the Visegrad area during the war, and the remains of 445 of them have been found and identified so far.

Kevljani

There are a series of graves of war victims in the village of Kevljani, 15 kilometres from the city of Prijedor in north-west Bosnia and Herzegovina. Investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY found and exhumed the grave sites from May 25 to and June 15, 1999. One of the graves was discovered in a meadow next to a largely-destroyed mosque and a Muslim cemetery.

Kevljani is five kilometres from the Omarska iron ore mine, which was the site of a Bosnian Serb-run detention camp. Many people who were held between May and August 1992 at Omarska and at a nearby Bosnian Serb-run detention camp, Keraterm, were reported missing.

Investigators established that one of the sites at which former Omarska camp detainees who disappeared were buried was Kevljani. Evidence found at the site, such as traces left by excavators, indicated that the graves had been dug up again in order to rebury the bodies elsewhere.

Some of the bodies had been dismembered when they were dug up, leaving isolated bone parts. The exhumation team discovered 72 complete or nearly complete bodies in 15 different graves. Expert analysis of soil and building materials confirmed a connection with the Omarska camp.

Today the gravesite is marked with a memorial plaque in front of the mosque, next to the destroyed minaret. The text on the plaque says: “At this site, a mass grave with 146 bodies of innocent victims was found. Two hundred metres away is Stari Kevljani, the largest mass grave found in Bosanska Krajina, with 456 victims from the Prijedor municipality.”

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 camp while it was open for a period of three months in 1992. 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 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 ICTY 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 ICTY gave Milomir Stakic, wartime president of the Serb-controlled Prijedor municipality Crisis Staff, the highest sentence for crimes in Prijedor – 40 years in prison.

 

Laniste 1

Laniste 1 is a primary mass grave located in a mountainous area 14 kilometres from the town of Kljuc in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina. The exhumation process started at the site in October 1996, and the remains of 188 people were found, from which 170 were identified. 

An underground cave called Bezdana at the Laniste site was used for the disposal of war victims’ bodies after they were killed in July 1992. The cave is located by a road in a wooded area and is over 20 meters below ground. A mountain lodge near the cave had been used by Serb paramilitary units as a base since the start of 1992.

Troops from the 17th Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, assisted by police officers and police reservists, attacked the village of Biljani in the Kljuc municipality on July 10, 1992 and killed more than 200 Bosniak men, women, children and elderly people. Men were also taken to a primary school in the village, where they were imprisoned and then taken out and killed. One group of men was first tortured and then taken to the Laniste site, where the killings continued.

The bodies of the murdered Bosniaks from Biljani were found in four mass graves including Laniste 1, as well as in several smaller graves containing a few people and in individual graves. Most of the graves were located ten kilometres or more away from Biljani. 

The oldest victim found at the Laniste 1 site was Beco Cehic, 85, and the youngest was a four-month-old baby, Amila Dzaferagic, who died holding a milk bottle, in the arms of her murdered mother. The bodies of 20 minors were exhumed, seven of them under the age of ten.

Evidence of the killings found at the Laniste 1 site included traces from bullets on the surrounding trees next to the underground cave into which the victims’ bodies were subsequently thrown. 

The location of the mass grave is marked with a memorial plaque and the underground cave has been fenced off and covered, but it is still possible to look inside and see how deep it is. 

The Bosnian state court sentenced Marko Samardzija, commander of the Third Company of the Sanica Battalion with the 17th Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, to seven years in prison for crimes committed in the Kljuc area, including the attack on Biljani. Former Bosnian Serb soldier Bosko Devic was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Bosnian state court for crimes in Kljuc, while the case against another Bosnian Serb ex-soldier, Mladjen Kovacevic, is at a standstill due to his poor health.

The Bosnian state court also sentenced former Bosnian Serb soldiers Marko Adamovic to 20 years in prison and Bosko Lukic to 12 years for participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at persecuting the non-Serb population in the Kljuc area during the summer of 1992, including the attack on Biljani.

Proceedings against several other suspects have been suspended due to their deaths, or are at a standstill because the suspects are unavailable to the Bosnian judicial authorities.

 

Hodzici Road 2

Hodzici Road 2 (also known as Snagovo 3) is a secondary mass grave, located near the village of Snagovo, some 17 kilometres north-west of the city of Zvornik. The grave was originally found by troops from NATO’s Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFOR, in 1998, while diverting a road around a landslide. There are seven known mass graves in the area, all secondary sites. It was named Hodzici Road because the village of Hodzici is nearby. A total of 160 human remains have been exhumed.

This secondary mass grave, which was called Snagovo 3 by the Bosnian Federal Commission on Missing Persons, was investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY in 1998 and responsibility for exhuming it was handed over to the Bosnian government in 2001. 

DNA analysis carried out by the International Commission on Missing Persons showed connections between this secondary gravesite and the disturbed primary gravesite Lazete 2 (also known as Orahovac 2). According to the ICTY’s forensic report on Srebrenica exhumations, this means that the remains of one individual were found in at least two different graves. The investigation also showed DNA connections between this site and Hodzici Road 1 (also known as Snagovo 4) and Hodzici Road 3. This indicates that human remains were dug up at the Lazete 2 primary mass grave and transferred to Hodzici Road, some 10 kilometres away. 

Forensic analysis of soil/pollen samples, evidence and aerial images of creation/disturbance dates, further revealed that bodies from the primary mass graves Lazete 1 and Lazete 2 were dug up and reburied at secondary graves in Snagovo.  

The Hodzici Road gravesite remains unmarked, on a meadow next to a rural mountain road, surrounded by woods.

ICTY verdicts found that captured Bosniak men from Srebrenica were transported on July 14, 1995 to a school in the village of Orahovac. In the early afternoon, Bosnian Serb Army Zvornik Brigade personnel under the supervision of Drago Nikolic,a security officer with the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade, and Milorad Trbic, Assistant Commander for Security with the Zvornik Brigade, then transported the captives to a nearby field, where personnel, including members of the 4th Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade, executed them with automatic weapons.

In related verdicts, the ICTY’s trial chamber found Radislav Krstic, the Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, guilty of genocide against Bosniaks from Srebrenica – its first verdict establishing that the Srebrenica masacres constituted genocide. Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison, although the sentence was subsequently shortened to 35 years.

The ICTY also found that Ljubisa Beara, the chief of security of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Staff, was told to organise, coordinate and facilitate the detention, transportation, summary execution and burial of the Bosniak victims murdered at Orahovac. Beara was assisted by, among others, commander Vujadin Popovic, Chief of Security of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, as well as Nikolic and Trbic. 

Beara, Popovic, Nikolic and Trbic were found to have supervised, facilitated and overseen the Orahovac executions, and the ICTY convicted them of genocide. Vidoje Blagojevic, commander of the Bratunac Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder and persecution of Bosniaks in the Srebrenica area, as well as aiding and abetting the murder of Bosniaks in Bratunac. Dragan Jokic, chief of engineering of the Zvornik Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to nine years in prison for the murders of Bosniaks in Orahovac, at the Branjevo Military Farm in Pilica and in Kozluk, and for providing engineering resources and personnel to dig mass graves for the executed victims.

According to the Federal Institute for Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the remains of 818 Bosniaks from Srebrenica were discovered at seven secondary gravesites in the Snagovo area.

Ravnice

Ravnice is a primary mass grave, located 20 kilometres north-west of the town of Srebrenica. It is six kilometres from an agricultural warehouse in Kravica where more than 1,300 Bosniaks from Srebrenica were executed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, there were no signs that the gravesite was disturbed or that bodies were moved on purpose.

In August 2000, the ICTY exhumation team initially discovered 34 bodies at the site called Ravnice 1. The rest of the exhumation process continued from July and August 2001, where 172 more bodies were exhumed. This part of the exhumation was done by the Bosnian Missing Persons Commission while the ICTY monitored the process. The second exhumation at the same location was named Ravnice 2. However, Ravnice 1 and 2 are considered to be one mass grave, from which a total of 258 human remains were exhumed.

Most of the remains were discovered on the surface of the steep sloping ground at the site and the bodies were reduced to skeletons as they had been exposed for more than five years to the atmosphere and to the attention of animals. Some bodies were covered with earth, while others were not and had rolled down the slope until they were stopped by trees and fences.

During the exhumation of Ravnice 1 and 2, materials such as concrete, plaster and other building material were found within the grave. These were considered to bе indistinguishable from materials found at the Kravica warehouse execution site and the Glogova 1 and Glogova 2 mass graves, as well as the secondary mass graves at Zeleni Jadar 5 and 6. Of particular interest was а dual-coloured piece of painted polystyrene foam found at Ravnice 2. This piece of foam was identical to foam lettering on the northern face of the Кravica warehouse above an entrance doorway.

The ages of the victims at Ravnice potentially ranged from eight to 90 years old at the time of their deaths. All of them had been shot, often multiple times. There was evidence of at least 700 shots having been fired.
All of the bodies were male and wore civilian clothing. Fourteen of them were 17 years of age or younger.
The Ravnice site remains unmarked on a steep slope next to the road in the woods. Since then, the warehouse at Kravica has changed little, although access to it is not allowed as it is now privately owned.

From July 12 to 13, 1995 around 5,000 Bosniak men from Srebrenica were captured by the Bosnian Serb Army. On July 13, more than 1,300 Bosniaks were transported to the Kravica warehouse, where they were executed with automatic rifles and hand grenades. Between July 14 and 16, heavy equipment arrived and removed the victims’ bodies to two large mass graves in the nearby villages of Glogova and Ravnice.

Nedeljko Milidragovic, Aleksa Golijanin, Milivoje Batinica, Aleksandar Dacevic, Bora Miletic, Jovan Petrovic, Dragomir Parovic and Vidosav Vasic are accused of organising and participating in the shooting of more than 1,300 civilians in the warehouse. The Serbian prosecution charged them in 2015 and the trial opened in February 2017, but proceedings have been plagued by delays.

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.

Lake Perucac

Lake Perucac is an artificial lake on the Drina River, bordering both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and lying between the city of Visegrad on the Bosnian side and the town of Bajina Basta on the Serbian side. The location was used for the disposal of corpses during both world wars, as well as during the 1990s conflicts. 

So far, the remains of 238 people who died in the 1990s wars have been identified in Lake Perucac, after being killed either by the Bosnian Serb Army or the Yugoslav Army and police. Some of the victims whose bodies have been found in the lake were killed in Srebrenica, Zvornik and Visegrad during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while 84 of the bodies were those of victims of the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.

The location of the mass grave is unmarked, and Lake Perucac is a popular tourist destination with summer houses, restaurants, cafes and water sports facilities. The artificial lake was created in 1966 to serve the needs of the hydroelectric power plant in Bajina Basta, a town some 13 kilometers away.

The first exhumations of bodies at the lake were carried out by the International Commission on Missing Persons in September 2001, when the remains of ethnic Albanian victims from Kosovo were found. 

A decade later, after the site was re-examined after a request from the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Working Group for Missing Persons in Pristina, there were more excavations, during which the remains of mostly Bosniak victims killed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina were found.

In 2013, even more human remains were found after the authorities lowered the level of the lake. 

The remains of 10 children have been found at this lake, of whom the youngest, a boy named Haris Podzic, was three-and-a-half years old. The remains of 40 women have also been found, most of them from the city of Visegrad. 

Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY described the atrocities committed in Visegrad during the Bosnian war as one of the “most notorious campaigns for the deportation of Bosniaks”. Most of the bodies were thrown into the River Drina, but the current washed them into the lake. 

The bodies of people killed in the Kosovo war were dumped directly into the lake. After some of the corpses started floating near the dam of the hydroelectric power plant in Lake Perucac, Vlastimir Djordjevic, a high-ranking Serbian Interior Ministry official, said that “measures should be taken to clear up the terrain”. This was followed by a secret state operation to move the corpses from the water to a mass grave on the shore. 

The operation was carried out by Interior Ministry operatives including Djordjevic who was later sentenced to 18 years in prison by the ICTY.

Several other people have been prosecuted by the ICTY for crimes related to the mass grave at the lake. The tribunal sentenced Mitar Vasiljevic, a former member of the White Eagles paramilitary group, to 15 years in prison for crimes committed in the area. It also sentenced Milan and Sredoje Lukic, both former leaders of the same paramilitary group, to life imprisonment and 30 years in prison respectively.

Zeleni Jadar 6

Zeleni Jadar is an area some 20 kilometres south of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia where at least seven clandestine gravesites were found, all of them secondary mass graves connected with the attempted cover-up of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres. 

The Zeleni Jadar 6 mass grave was discovered in 2001 and the remains of 135 people were exhumed. 

From Srebrenica, it is a half-hour drive to the hills of Zeleni Jadar, where unmarked gravesites lie on both the left and right sides of the road, in forests and fields. 

According to the report compiled by investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, most of the victims buried at the site were male, aged from eight to 65 years old. Six of them were 17 or under. Clothing was still present on most of the bodies, while some had signs of burning. The vast majority were found to have died from gunshot injuries. Only a few personal belongings were found – watches and smoking-related items. The primary mass grave from which human remains were moved to Zeleni Jadar 6 was the one at Glogova, located close to the town of Bratunac.

As at the Zeleni Jadar 5 mass grave, concrete, plaster and other building materials detected in the grave matched those from a warehouse at a farm in Kravica, close to the town of Bratunac. On July 13 and 14, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed 1,313 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in Kravica. 

After the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, more than 7,000 Bosniak men were killed and most of them buried in July in six primary mass graves: Branjevo, Kozluk, the Petkovci Dam, Cerska, Orahovac and Glogova. During September and October 1995, the primary graves at these locations were dug up by Bosnian Serb forces and the bodies were reburied in secondary graves in an attempt to cover up the crimes. 

The exhumation and transfer of corpses from Glogova to Zeleni Jadar took place at night over a period of time between August 24 and October 23, 1995. Following instructions from Bosnian Serb Army commanders Vujadin Popovic and Vidoje Blagojevic, another high-ranking officer with the Bosnian Serb Army, Momir Nikolic, assisted in the exhumation and reburial operation. 

The reburial operation was dubbed ‘asanacija’ in Serbian, meaning hygiene and sanitation measures. According to Nikolic, ‘asanacija’  normally involved the removal and burial of dead bodies from a battlefield, but in this case, the term referred to the relocation of the bodies buried in Glogova to smaller secondary graves in the area surrounding Srebrenica, Zeleni Jadar in particular. The operation was supposed to be a covert one but was carried out openly and required the involvement of a lot of manpower, resources, assets and vehicles.

The Bratunac Brigade Military Police secured the road from Bratunac to Srebrenica in order to facilitate the movement of the vehicles through inhabited areas. They also secured the grave sites as workers from the Municipal Staff for Civilian Protection of Bratunac did the digging work. Civilian police officers were involved as well. An excavator loader and a backhoe excavator were used for the digging and four to five trucks were used to transport the bodies from Glogova to Zeleni Jadar.

For these and other crimes related to the killings in Srebrenica, 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.