Comrades gather today: Žepa defense hero Avdo Palić must not be forgotten

Former fighters of the Žepa Brigade will gather today in the courtyard of Alipašina Mosque in Sarajevo, where Avdo Palić, the hero of Žepa's defense and commander of this Army of RBiH brigade, is buried, writes the Patria news agency.

The gathering is scheduled for 4:30 PM. By reciting Yasin and laying flowers, they will once again pay tribute to their commander.

- Let us not allow those who enabled our present freedom to fall into oblivion, say Palić's comrades.

Avdo Palić was captured on July 27, 1995, by the assistant chief for security and intelligence of the VRS General Staff, Zdravko Tolimir, and brought to the command post of Ratko Mladić.

He spent fifteen days in Rogatica, where he was interrogated by the chief of security of the General Staff, Ljubomir Beara, after which he was transferred to the garrison military prison Vanekov mlin in Bijeljina, from where he was taken out by Mladić's personal escort, Dragomir Pećanac, and since then all trace of him has been lost.

Palić's remains were exhumed from a mass grave in November 2001 in Vragolovi near Rogatica, along with the remains of eight other victims. The search for the bones lasted 14 years. The mass grave in Vragolovi was discovered in 2001 by Jusuf Karahmet, a few months after he returned to his home. The exhumation took place on November 3 of the same year.

Nine complete bodies were exhumed, and two skulls were found a few meters outside the grave. In Palić's case, the sample was not "genetically good enough", which is why, during the first match with blood samples in the ICMP database, a match with Palić's sister and children was shown with only 22 percent.

After the unsuccessful DNA analysis, Palić was buried in the cemetery in Visoko, under the designation NN. A second DNA analysis was performed in August 2009 and proves with 99.99 percent accuracy that the skeletal remains belong to Avdo Palić.

Palić was buried in the courtyard of Alipašina Mosque on August 26, 2009, with the highest military honors.