Batajnica
Cancari Road 10
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.
