Grabovica for Patria: Our children were targeted, I expect life imprisonment for Karadžić

THE HAGUE, (Patria) - President of the Association of Parents of Killed Children of Besieged Sarajevo "92-95" Fikret Grabovica is in The Hague where he will attend on Wednesday the pronouncement of the second-instance verdict against war criminal Radovan Karadžić. Grabovica said he expects the second-instance verdict to confirm all the crimes for which he was previously convicted, especially for the joint criminal enterprise of spreading terror among the civilian population of Sarajevo through a campaign of sniping and shelling of civilians.

„Especially because during the siege of the city, 1,600 children were killed. If someone had taken 1,600 pencils, brought them to the city and broken them, they would have been punished, but not for 1,600 children when we know that the children were killed without any doubt, killed intentionally, targeted and systematically. There is abundant evidence for that. I expect that his other criminal acts will be confirmed and that he will receive a life sentence“, said Grabovica, whose 11-year-old daughter Irma was killed in a grenade explosion in besieged Sarajevo on March 20, 1993.  
 
Members of the Association will follow the pronouncement of the verdict against Karadžić on Wednesday at the Institute for Research of Crimes against Humanity and International Law. The Association of Killed Children of Sarajevo today has about 1,800 members. Grabovica explains that many parents have moved away from Sarajevo, some have died, while others are not active in the Association's work. 
 
During the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted 1,425 days, an average of 329 shells fell on the city every day, killing 11,541 civilians, including 1,601 children, and wounding at least 50,000 people.
 
The memorial to the killed children of Sarajevo was unveiled on May 9, 2009, in Veliki Park, and on seven pedestals the names of 521 killed children are engraved. 
The monument consists of a bronze ring in the center of which are two glass sculptures 5 and 3 meters high. On the bronze ring, 10 meters in diameter and 0.7 meters high, made from shell casings and other ammunition fired at Sarajevo, the footprints of relatives of some of the killed children are imprinted. The ring symbolically represents the encirclement that held Sarajevo under siege for almost four years. The glass sculptures inside the ring, of different heights, separated but still leaning on each other at the tips, symbolize a mother desperately trying to protect her child.