Parents of children killed at Kapija die without seeing justice, criminal Đukić is a free man in Serbia

As they mark 30 years since the crime at Tuzla's Kapija, the parents of the murdered children, as well as those wounded in May 1995, have lost all hope for justice and punishment of those responsible. Detektor has again spoken with the parents and the wounded who spoke for a TV show seven years ago. The only change they see since then is that some parents are no longer among the living.

Every hour of every day for the last 30 years has been the same for Dino Kalesić.

“We know what we go to bed with, what we wake up with,” says the father of Sandro, the youngest victim killed at Tuzla's Kapija.

“The worst thing that can happen to a person is to bury their own children. You wouldn't wish that on your greatest enemy or adversary, and it's hard for anything to change from that emotional side,” says Dino.

Some parents are no longer here, participants in the film you made, adds Dino as we talk at the same place where seven years ago he spoke about his memories of the day he lost his two-and-a-half-year-old son Sandro.

“People are passing away without having fully seen justice served,” adds Dino.

Two parents that Detektor filmed for a TV show in 2018 have since died, while the trial of Novak Đukić – which would confirm the conviction from Bosnia and Herzegovina for the shelling of Kapija – has never even begun in Serbia.

Nothing changes, Dino is disappointed.

“We have drawn a line. We do not expect that a retrial can be achieved and that Novak Đukić can be brought to justice. That is part of the political marketplace between the two states and it was worked on intensively, because if it weren't, it certainly wouldn't have happened that the only person convicted for the massacre at Kapija coldly walked out of our prisons, crossed our state borders, and went to another country. I think that is a unique case in the world,” Dino is clear.

For the crime at Kapija, Novak Đukić was found guilty by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for ordering, as commander of the VRS Tactical Group “Ozren”, on May 25, 1995, an artillery platoon to shell the city of Tuzla with cannons, resulting in the massacre at Kapija in which more than 70 people were killed.

In February 2014, he was released from prison after the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina – due to incorrect application of the law – overturned the verdict sentencing him to 25 years in prison. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina reduced Đukić's sentence to 20 years in June 2014, and his defense attorney informed the Court a few days later that the convict was undergoing treatment in Serbia.

A warrant for Đukić was issued in October 2014 because he did not respond to a summons to serve his sentence, after which Serbia was asked to take over the verdict.

The Higher Court in Belgrade issued an order in October 2021 for a new expert assessment of Novak Đukić's procedural capacity.

“That is just a continuation of the farce. The expert assessment of Đukić's medical condition itself is a farce. Even while he was serving his sentence, he spent more time in medical facilities than in a cell. It has been a farce from the beginning,” says Dino.

His son Sandro was two and a half years old when he was hit by a shrapnel from a shell that fell on Tuzla's square, full of people, on May 25, 1995.

“When I saw that my Sandro was hit, I grabbed him, moved him away, shells always come in pairs. I didn't know he was hit and then I saw blood on his chest area,” he recalled earlier for Detektor about Sandro's wounding and the trip to the hospital.

“When we got to the entrance gate of the clinical center, I already felt that Sandro had died in my arms. Of course, when we went inside, we ran to the emergency room to try. And that's the story of the 25th,” Dino recounted.

Admir Ikinić, who was wounded at Kapija on May 25, 1995, as an eighteen-year-old, has also lost hope in justice and the Bosnian judiciary.

“Because of Đukić and people like him, I experienced two post-traumatic stress disorders. I was in the hospital, lying down for seven or eight months. I don't know what he has been treating for ten years. And his biological clock is ticking, and it's all up to the judiciary, and the relationship between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia,” says Admir.

He, along with several other wounded individuals, sued the Republika Srpska and its former army for damages, but year after year, court after court rejected them, until the final decision in 2020.

“First, the Cantonal Court in Tuzla rejected us, then the Supreme Court of the Federation, and finally the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The explanation for the rejections was that we were late with our lawsuits. I have nothing else to say except shameful,” says Admir.

His story and those of other parents, recorded in Detektor's show, is now shown at the Kapija Memorial Center in Tuzla. Dino says he is glad that soon, older elementary and high school students will visit this memorial center once a year and learn about the past.

“The Memorial Center is a place where the memory of Kapija should be preserved, which for decades should tell the peoples what happened in Tuzla,” says Dino.