TEAR UP THE LETTER, IVICA IS THE KILLER. The BiH Prosecutor's Office has no evidence, even though neighbors suspected who shot Besim Haskić's parents?

Author: Rasim Belko

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A crime committed almost 30 years ago in the settlement of Donja Večeriska near Vitez still awaits prosecution, and its perpetrators brought to justice. However, that justice and the victims' right to it are suspended where justice should be the goal, in the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And therefore, descendants and victims will obviously wait much longer for justice to arrive and the killer of their loved ones to be convicted. 

In the midst of a frontal attack on Vitez, the Croatian Defence Council entered the aforementioned place after everyone who could leave had already left.

The infirm elderly and women remained. However, for the HVO, they were also targets. Eight civilians were killed, all of them elderly. On April 16, Haskić (Agan) Habiba, Haskić (Nuraga) Zirafeta, Zlotrg (Zeir) Sakib, Memeledija (Agan) Fatima, Haskić (Hasan) Smajo, Haskić (Hadži Omer) Emina, Haskić (Mahmut) Mehmed were killed.

Emina Haskić was immobile at the time of her murder and for the last 20 years of her life. However, this could not save her from the criminal hands of HVO extremists. Her son, Besim Haskić, speaks about the crime and the fight for truth to the Agency Patria thirty years later.

Haskić is the president of the Association for the Protection of War Achievements of Vitez, and in the interview, he talks about the days when his parents were killed: 

“Six elderly people and my parents were killed in an HVO attack. Now they say that extreme parts of the HVO committed it, but they never named them. To this day, it will be 30 years soon, no one has been held accountable,” Haskić says, among other things. 

 

Haskić has contacted the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and other institutions, but everything ended with the story that the killers are unknown. 

“I received a written response from prosecutor Ivan Matešić, who is practically acting as the lawyer of that person pointed at. I received a response that this person was not in a command position at the time,” Haskić says, recalling that he intervened with the message that he was not interested in who was not, but that Matešić should bring to justice the one who was. 

Haskić then contacted the former chief prosecutor Gordana Tadić. Dissatisfied with her answers, he also went to a meeting, but the result was identical. On both occasions, Tadić told Haskić that there were priorities. 

“I don't understand those priorities. Someone kicked someone in the butt and was convicted, while eight people were killed here and that's not a priority for someone,” Haskić tells Patria. 

Our interlocutor returned to Donja Večeriska after the war and was a guarantor to the international community that there would be no problems after the return. And then, Croatian neighbors started sending letters to Besim Haskić, revealing more details in the next letter, as if in a trilogy. 

In the last, third letter, suspicion was cast on a named member of the HVO. 

“It is about Ivan Drmić, son of the late Slavko, who in my opinion is limited, but even such a person is given a weapon. According to my knowledge, he now has more weapons because he is a member of some hunting association,” Haskić points out. 

Haskić submitted all three letters to the competent authorities, but none were sufficient to initiate an investigation. 

In the last letter, Besim's neighbors write: “There are honest people among us, Croats, Serbs, and Muslims, but what Ivica Drmić Stančikin did is a real disgrace and shame. He shouldn't have killed innocent people. He killed your father and mother and that refugee who lived near Šiša.” 

The neighbors, apparently in fear, conclude the letter with a message to Haskić: “Tear up this letter, we just wanted you to know who killed your parents.” 

However, what Haskić and Donja Večeriska know or suspect is not enough to bring the perpetrator to justice. It is not even enough for the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina to launch an investigation. 

“The Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has determined that there is not enough evidence to support a founded suspicion that Ivica Drmić committed the criminal offense in question,” it is stated in the final sentence of prosecutor Ivan Matešić's response to Besim Haskić. 

It is obvious that the victims of the crime in Donja Večeriska near Vitez will wait a long time for their killers to be brought to justice. And justice, it will wait even longer, because in the Prosecutor's Office led by the current chief prosecutor Milanko Kajganić or previously by Gordana Tadić, the right of the aforementioned, it has long been clear, has nothing to do with justice.