Koricani Cliffs
Ramin Grob
Hrastova Glavica is an underground cave located about 15 kilometres from the town of Sanski Most in north-west Bosnia and Herzegovina. The remains of 121 victims of a massacre that took place on August 5, 1992 were identified. All but two of them were detainees from the Keraterm and Omarska camps near Prijedor; the other two are believed to have been killed during World War Two.
In 1992 detainees were taken by buses to Hrastova Glavica, where they were killed and thrown in a pit that was about 20 metres deep. They had previously been tortured at the Keraterm and Omarska camps.
In 2012, the Izvor Association of Prijedor Women and the Association of Former Camp Prisoners from Sanski Most installed a memorial to the victims at the Hrastova Glavica cave. It includes two plaques bearing the names of those killed in 1992 and the two victims from World War Two.
The location was discovered due to the only survivor of the massacre, Ibrahim Ferhatovic, who was later killed by Bosnian Serb forces, but before his death he managed to tell the story of the massacre to someone who later testified as a protected witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Missing Persons Commission, together with the Physicians for Human Rights, recovered the victims’ remains from the underground cave in December 1998. According to the forensic report, all victims were males between 17 and 60 years of age and most had skeletal evidence of gunshot trauma. A lot of clothing was found, mostly civilian.
So far, 37 Bosnian Serbs have been sentenced to a total of 617 years in prison for crimes committed during the war in the Prijedor area. Among them was Milomir Stakic, the wartime president of the Serb-controlled Prijedor municipality Crisis Staff and head of the Municipal Council for National Defence in Prijedor, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
