Hasečić on criminal Šekarić: I collected Fatima's bones that burned in the house into a small pot

Bakira Hasečić, president of the Association „Woman-Victim of War“, reacted to today's decision of the Appellate Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to increase the prison sentence for the Višegrad criminal Dragan Šekarić to 17 years, writes the news agency Patria.

In a statement to Patria, she recalled that she was a witness for the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the case of Dragan Šekarić.

-I was a witness in the reconstruction of events at the scene in my Kosovo Polje, Municipality of Višegrad, where I was born. It is very difficult as a victim to return to the crime scene and again see the executioner in my own yard, but the advantage is seeing him with handcuffs on his hands.

For the surviving victim, family members of the killed, and eyewitnesses, the greatest satisfaction is to see justice served, although justice for us is never fully satisfied.

While I am telling you this, that June 3, 1992, is spinning through my head. All the images are spinning in my head, especially the image where I, along with several of my neighbors, was the first to go to the burning house of Ševket Jamak and, digging with a hoe into a small pot while the house was still burning, managed to find some remains of the bones of Fatima Jamak.

I remember, first I found the lower jaw with two teeth, a chain she had around her neck, and some bones. I remembered that while the house was burning and with it the late Fatima, neighbor Stanko Pecikoza, whom the Serbs killed, and neighbor Stanimir Pecikoza, who is alive and lives in Kosovo Polje, came to try to put out the fire at Ševket Jamak's house.

Stanko then said, "No, it wasn't set on fire, I called a certain Crni in the Sase settlement and he told me that the Eagles took Fatima to the Višegrad spa, they will return her,“ Hasečić recalls and continues:  

-You survive everything, you see. You see a woman an hour before, you talk to her, and afterwards you take out her little bones. What to say but to testify, to tell the truth with the aim of prosecuting war criminals, nothing else.

I am essentially satisfied with the sentences given, although I repeat that victims and family members can never be satisfied, because there is no death penalty in the Criminal Code. But the verdicts are also messages, God forbid it repeats in the future, and that everyone will think carefully about whether someone will do something similar because justice will catch up with them sooner or later.