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. The first one discovered, known as Zeleni Jadar 5, was found in 1998, yielded the remains of people killed during the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995. 

The area remains unmarked – clandestine grave sites were scattered along both sides of the road, some of them deeper into a forest, some in fields, some close to the river that bears the same name as the area, Jadar. 

Many of the body parts found in the graves in Zeleni Jadar matched remains found at the Glogova 1 and 2 gravesites. At all of the Zeleni Jadar graves – Zeleni Jadar 1A, 1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 – links with the Glogova 1 primary grave were established through the identification of body parts belonging to the same individuals found in both the Glogova 1 grave and one of the secondary graves.

At the beginning of the excavation, forensic teams from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY noted that most of the bodies found were incomplete, while clothing was present on most of the bodies and relatively few had personal possessions like watches, jewellery, smoking-related items and papers. 

The age of the victims found ranged from eight to 65. One of the youngest victims found was a 14-year-old, Senad Beganovic, whose body parts were found in four mass graves including the Zeleni Jadar 5 site. 

According to the ICTY forensic report, most of the victims had gunshot wounds, while a few had injuries from explosions and explosive devices. 

At Zeleni Jadar, seven gravesites can be linked to executions at 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 in Kravica. 

Remains of the victims of a separate mass shooting in a hangar behind the Vuk Karadzic school in Bratunac, where 400 Bosniaks were detained on July 13, 1995, were also found at Zeleni Jadar.

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 mass grave in Branjevo in north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the first five mass graves to be discovered almost a year after the war ended. It was found by the investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia about 130 metres from the Branjevo Military Farm, where more than 1,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica were executed in July 1995. 

It is а deep, primary grave on the edge of a large, cultivated field near the village of Pilica on the western side of the River Drina, across a bridge from neighbouring Serbia. 

The area where the grave was found is now almost unrecognisable and difficult to find as it lies in the middle of a recently-built village, spread among private houses, agricultural fields and a small forest. 

The Branjevo Military Farm building was also torn down after the war and the Bosnian Serb authorities built a new neighbourhood at the site with a church, private homes, shops and other buildings. The land originally belonged to the Agroprom company, but in 1994 it was requisitioned by the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade to produce food for soldiers.  

А preliminary reconnaissance of the area was conducted in April 1996, while autopsy examinations of victims were carried out in October that year.

It was found that the victims were killed away from the grave and subsequently placed in it. The wrists of 77 of them were bound. According to a forensic report compiled by Physicians for Human Rights, all the individuals found in the mass grave were dressed in civilian clothing with the exception of one person who was wearing military trousers. 

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 Branjevo grave were killed at the Pilica Cultural Centre by Bosnian Serb forces in mid-July 1995. 

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 Bosniaks who were being detained there. Firing and explosions could also be heard that afternoon in Pilica itself, coming from the direction of the Cultural Centre. No one survived the execution. 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” and the bodies – two of which were female – were all wearing civilian clothes. The bodies were then buried at Branjevo Military Farm. 

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.

Kozluk is a primary mass grave of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, near the village of Kozluk, 15 kilometers north-east of the city of Zvornik. The site is approached by а road that passes the Vitinka soft-drink bottling factory in Kozluk. The road degenerates into а track as it reaches an area used for rubbish dumps and gravel extraction by the River Drina. The gravesite remains unmarked. 

In 1998, investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia visited the site and discovered disturbed soil. They returned in June 1999 and began the process of exhumation. DNA examinations bу the International Committee on Missing Persons indicated that there were 341 victims in the Kozluk grave. However, investigations concluded that before the exhumation started, some bodies had been removed from the grave as part of attempts by the Bosnian Serb Army to cover up the killings. 

After execution, the victims killed at the Kozluk site 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 secondary mass graves at Cancari Road 1 (Kamenica 14), 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. 

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 summarily executed by Bosnian Serb military personnel with automatic weapons. 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.

In 2015, in the fourth exhumation at Kozluk, a new gravesite was found and the remains of a further 55 people discovered – 15 complete and 40 incomplete bodies. As some remains were transferred from the Kozluk site to other locations, the search for at least 200 more bodies continues.

The Glogova 2 mass grave was discovered in September 1999 in the village of the same name in the eastern Bosnian municipality of Bratunac. The excavation lasted from mid-September to late October around a dirt road between Konjevic Polje and Bratunac. The grave was heavily disturbed and was made up of several smaller-sub graves, in which a total of 140 remains were found.

Most of the individuals buried in the mass grave were male. At least 41 of them were aged from 14 to 24. The majority had sustained gunshot wounds. 

The location of the mass grave remains unmarked. It lies in open fields next to a busy village road, surrounded by a few houses.

The exact location was discovered by ICTY investigators after the United States provided an aerial image showing that the ground at the site had been disturbed.  

Aerial imagery dated July 17, 1995 showed bulldozers parked nearby and disturbed soil, while imagery from October same year captured the additional excavation activities.

Glogova 2 is a primary mass grave containing the bodies of victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. Following additional forensic analysis of the remains, it was determined that a number of victims from Glogova 2 were reburied more than 40 kilometers away in another mass grave named Zeleni Jadar 5 in an additional attempt to cover up the killings.  

Comparison of the ejector marks on shell casings recovered from the Zeleni Jadar 5 grave with shell cases found at the Kravica warehouse execution site, where many Bosniaks from Srebrenica were shot dead, showed that a number of people that were buried in Zeleni Jadar 5 and Glogova 2 were killed at the warehouse, according to the ICTY investigators. 

Various domestic and international verdicts have established that Bosnian Serb forces killed 1,313 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in a hangar at an agricultural farm in Kravica on July 13 and 14, 1995. Between July 14 and 16, heavy equipment arrived and removed the victims’ bodies to mass graves in the nearby villages of Glogova and Ravnice.

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 Glogova 1 mass grave was exhumed in 2000, a year after the exhumation was completed on the Glogova 2 mass grave, both in the municipality of Bratunac in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the US provided an aerial image showing the ground at the site had been disturbed, ICTY investigators found the remains of more than 200 people, most of them killed during the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. 

Most of the victims were male, aged from 12 to 75, while at least 26 of them were aged under 24. Eleven of them were under 17. 

When the grave was discovered, recognisable clothing was found, none of it military. Most of the bodies had gunshot wounds and a quarter of them had signs of burns.

The mass grave was located on the road from Bratunac to Konjevic Polje, in open fields, surrounded by a few houses. It remains unmarked.

ICTY forensic teams also found pieces of smashed masonry and doors at the Glogova 1 site which could have come from a warehouse in Kravica, where on July 13, 1995, Bosnian Serb soldiers executed 1,313 Bosniak men. Automatic weapons, hand grenades, and other weapons were used to kill the men inside the warehouse. Between July 14 and 16, 1995, heavy equipment arrived and removed the victims’ bodies to two large mass graves in the nearby villages of Glogova and Ravnice.

Glogova 1 and Glogova 2 are primary mass graves and initially contained many more remains, but in a subsequent cover-up operation by Bosnian Serb forces in the fall of 1995, bodies were transported from there to at least 16 reburial locations that have been discovered so far, according to the Bosnian Institute for Missing Persons. 

International and domestic courts’ verdicts have found that the Engineering Unit of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade participated in burying the bodies in the primary mass graves in July 1995.

The subsequent operation to conceal the crimes that took place between August and November 1995 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”.

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.