Bezdan Pit
Sasina
Redak 1 is a primary mass grave located in the Ljubija iron mine complex, 18 kilometres from the city of Prijedor. It is on a secluded hillside, above a road, surrounded by woods. Seventy-four bodies were exhumed from the grave. Before the war, the gravesites were open pits inside the mine, but in 1992 they were filled with soil, according to witnesses.
In late July 1992, about 120 men from the Miska Glava area, among whom were 15 minors, were first taken to the Miska Glava cultural centre, where a witness said they were assaulted, then to the nearby stadium, where they were tortured and abused for three days. While in detention, some ten to 15 prisoners were killed, while the rest were taken to Ljubija and shot. Only a few managed to survive.
Prosecution witness Nermin Karagic told Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal that he was 17 years old at the time and survived because a major eventually stopped the shootings, although his father was killed. “We were then ordered to carry the dead bodies and load them onto a bus,” Karagic said. He managed to escape by jumping off the bus.
The victims’ remains were found and exhumed from mass graves at the Redak 1 and Redak 2 sites, while ten more bodies were found at the Hozic Kamen site near the town of Bosanski Novi in 2016.
The Redak 1 mass grave site remains neglected and unmarked inside the Ljubija iron mine complex. The Redak 1 and Redak 2 sites, as well as the Jakarina Kosa and Tomasica sites, all located at the Ljubija mine, were used to hide the bodies of non-Serbs from the Prijedor and Sanski Most areas.
Three indictments have been raised in Bosnia but no one has yet been convicted.
Nine former members of the Bosnian Serb Army, the police and the local Bosnian Serb crisis staff, which arranged for Bosniaks to leave Serb-dominated municipalities, were indicted in 2017 for taking part in the unlawful detention of around 120 men in the Miska Glava area. The indictees were Slobodan Taranjac, Milodrag Glusac, Ranko Babic, Ranko Dosenovic, Marinko Prastalo, Rade Zekanovic, Zdravko Panic, Trivo and Milan Vukic.
In 2018, the Bosnian state court also confirmed the indictment of Milorad Obradovic and Slobodan Knezevic for taking part in the persecution of Bosniak civilians in late July 1992 as members of the reservist police force and military police in Ljubija near Prijedor.
In February 2022, two other suspects, Dane Bajic and Miodrag Knezevic were charged with crimes against humanity against Bosniaks and Croats in Prijedor in 1992, including the crimes in Miska Glava. Neither man appeared for a court hearing.
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 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia gave Milomir Stakic, wartime president of the Serb-controlled Prijedor municipality Crisis Staff, the highest sentence for crimes in Prijedor – 40 years in prison.
