Footage Hidden for 30 Years: Members of the Croatian Army Guide HVO Members on How to Destroy the Old Bridge in Mostar

(Patria) - The Unique Organization of Fighters of the City of Mostar (JOB) and the Center for Peace and Multiethnic Cooperation from Mostar have recently come into possession of authentic film material containing exclusive footage, unseen by the public for the past 30 years until today, of the shelling and destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar on November 8 and 9, 1993.

As the video recordings confirm, the shelling of the Old Bridge was filmed by a Croatian Army crew from fortifications on the towers of Hum Hill above the city. Their camera continuously tracks the trajectories of more than 50 projectiles fired by an HVO tank from the Stotina site, then located on the western side of the Boulevard above the Mostar neighborhood of Kolonija.

The video material also shows moments when members of the Croatian Army crew use radio communication to guide the tank crew to carry out more precise strikes on the arches and foundations of the Old Bridge, while reporting to their curious command by phone “how the destruction of the Old Bridge is progressing and at what stage it has reached…”

The content of the recorded material, with brutal swearing, comments, and bursts of approval and celebration at every direct hit of a shell on the body of the Bridge, also irrefutably testifies that the Old Bridge, along with the entire historic core, was shelled and destroyed out of pathological hatred for Islamic historical heritage, and not at all as a “logical military target to be destroyed.”

We believe that the newly discovered film material is to date certainly the most convincing and undeniable film testimony about who inspired, ordered, monitored the course of the shelling, and celebrated the destruction of the Old Bridge. Although the Hague Tribunal in its final verdict on the “six” political and military officials of the para-state “Herceg-Bosna” on November 29, 2017, clearly defined that the Old Bridge was destroyed by shells from a tank at an HVO position, the film material we possess definitively seals and stigmatizes the shameful role of the instigators of this planetary cultural crime, from which the official Zagreb and the Croatian government structure in Mostar and Herzegovina have never distanced themselves, it was stated. 

Footage hidden for 30 years. Watch how members of the Croatian Army navigate HVO members during the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar source: Center for Peace Mostar pic.twitter.com/SlBUjUMnIF

— Istraga.ba (@IstragaB) May 6, 2023