Hell called Srebrenica: Undeserved Genocide (Video)

Twenty-two years after the Srebrenica massacres, the direct authors of the mass killings of Bosniaks have not yet been charged and brought to trial.

I was lying there pretending to be dead. No moves. I couldn't breathe. ”

Mevludin Oriq remembers that day in July 1995, when about 1,000 men and boys from Srebrenica were shot dead by Bosnian Serb forces in a field near the village of Rahovec in the Zvornik area.

I heard them load their guns. They shouted, laughed and drank. They were having fun,” said Oriq for BIRN.

But this is not the only massacre that took place in July 1995 for which none of the direct authors has ever been charged. Two days after the Bosnian Serb Army took Srebrenica to the Cersca Valley on the banks of the Jadar River, 167 men and boys from Srebrenica were killed. Many more murders occurred in Luce, near the village of Tisca and Snagovo near Zvornik, following the fall of Srebrenica, as well as in Bisina near Sekovici, where about 60 people were killed in July 1995.

Bosnians who survived the massacres by leaving for Tuzel through the woods saw these massacres, but the victims' families are still waiting for justice. Some of these crimes are cited in several different cases at The Hague tribunal and are part of the charges against former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, the decision he is expected to make in November.

At The Hague Court, a total of 38 former members of the Bosnian Serb police forces and the Serb Army may have been sentenced to a total of more than 400 years in prison for genocide and other crimes against humanity in Srebrenica. Most of the direct authors have been convicted of murder at execution sites in Kravica, Pilica and Branjevo, but not for other massacres.

Mevludin Oriq was banned while trying to escape through the forest from Srebrenica to Tullez, which was under the control of the Bosnian Army in July 1995. He was taken to a school in Rahovec, where he was put in a narrow hall with another man from Srebrenica and held in inhumane conditions for several days. The Orary recalls that one night the prisoners were blindfolded and taken to a nearby field.

My cousin Aidy and I were held by hand. He shouted: They'll kill us... I couldn't say this would happen before the shooting started,” said Oric. My “my cousin hit a bullet and fell on it. ”

He remembers feeling the warmth of his cousin's blood and his weight on his back.

“Not allowed in silence. I didn't move. The shooting stopped. Aidy was shaking. He cried and trembled. He was shaking. Then he kept quiet. ”

The murders continued overnight after his cousin died. Oric believes that he later lost consciousness, and when he woke up, he realized that armed men had fled. He barely stood up. His arms were numb.

I tried to stand, but I couldn't. I couldn't move Aid. I had no power. I was hungry and thirsty. I saw everyone in the field in the hall with me. Nobody moved. They were all dead. I realized I had to run. I had no choice. ”

Then he started to cry.

At Ratko Mladic's trial in The Hague, a former Bosnian Serb soldier testified that he saw a six-year-old or seven child surviving the massacre in Rahovec. The crime was also cited in the decision against former Bosnian Serb Army officers Vujadin Popovic and Lubisha Beara, both sentenced to life in prison for their role in genocide. The decision says the first two mass executions of genocide occurred in the Cersca Valley and on the banks of the Jadar River on 13 July and 14 July 1995.

Zulfo Salikovic was one of the men in the range of Bosniaks who fled from Srebrenica to Tuzla. He told BIRN he saw men caught near Cersca and several killed near a bridge in the Jadar River. One day later, he saw dead bodies in the Cersca Valley.

There was a huge mass of dead people and nearby I saw ammunition holes. I turned around some of the bodies, but I couldn't recognize anyone. They had begun digging a large mass grave nearby,” he said.

According to the Institute for Missing Persons and based on evidence of men who survived escape through forests, 150 dead bodies were found in Cerska.

Fadilla Efe persecuted told BIRN that she greeted her son and husband on July 11, 1995, when she took her daughter to the base of UN peacekeepers in Potocari near Srebrenica, seeking refuge from Bosnian Serb forces.

Both men set out through the forest and years after the war, she still thought they had been lost but were alive. However, she found her husband's remains in Zelen Jadar and then some of her son's remains in Kamenica, near Zvornik.

They told me nothing. They just told me they were dead. They had been shot or torn... Since my husband's head was found in a second tomb, I was told that there was a possibility of his being beheaded,” said Efendic, who blames Bosnian authorities for not properly investigating her husband's death.

She is also angry that no one has been indicted for her son's death more than two decades after the crime.

While traveling with BIRN to the site of the tomb at Jadar where her husband was found, the persecuted Efen says this was a place in which she had a wonderful childhood.

“Who would have thought there would one day have been a mass grave?” she asked.

Abdulkadir Veliq was a 20-year-old emergency worker at the Srebrenica hospital during wartime. He refused to leave injured men behind and stayed with them while being transported by Serb forces from Srebrenica to a school in Luce in July 1995.

One of the men in the group of wounded men was Sadik Selimovic. He remembers that Serbian soldiers divided the men in Luke. Some of them were sent to Kladanj to the Bosnian Army, some returned to Bratunac, and some stayed in school.

Veliqi's family discovered that he was forced to stay in Luke when some of the prisoners arrived in Kladanj. They had hoped that nothing bad would happen, since it was protected by international law as an emergency worker.

That hope disappeared when Veliqi's remains were discovered shortly after the war, along with those of about 25 other men in the village of Tisca.

Admir Veliq, Abdulkadir's brother, then tried to reveal the truth.

We learned that a man had survived this massacre. He was in school and gave us a book that told us the story of what had happened. He described how prior to the killings, Abdulkadir was abused more than others. That until he had lost his senses,” said Velic.

Haska Veliq, the mother of Abdulkadir and Admir, says her life could never be the same and that the perpetrators who are still at large should finally be identified and tried.

I'd like to find out who did this. Then they punished him, so he would never be free again,” she said. / BIRN/