Cancari Road 2
Cancari Road 5
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.
