BiH Prosecutor's Office has no indictments for the Siege of Sarajevo, nor for any child killed in the besieged city, despite witnesses

By Amra Vrabac

Next Sunday, May 5, Sarajevo will mark the Day of Remembrance of the Children Killed in Besieged Sarajevo during the period 1992-1995 with a commemorative program.

32 years have passed since the beginning of the war. Since the establishment of the BiH Prosecutor's Office in 2004, not a single indictment has been filed for the Siege of Sarajevo, even though war criminal Radovan Karadžić was convicted for terrorizing the civilian population of Sarajevo during the siege of the capital, and his intention to participate in a joint criminal enterprise for crimes in Sarajevo was proven. Cantonal prosecutor's offices are also not filing indictments, despite some cases being transferred to their jurisdiction.

The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide has been calling on the BiH Prosecutor's Office for years to access Annex B of the revised BiH strategy, which contains the names of those responsible for shelling and sniping in the Siege of Sarajevo, and which was submitted to the Hague Tribunal in accordance with the rules of the Rome Statute. This documentation is also available to BiH investigative bodies.

According to Patria's information, there is documentation containing artillery logs of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), which shelled and sniped Sarajevo and its citizens from various positions. The brutality of these crimes is evident in the fact that people were shelled in broad daylight while standing in line for water and bread, children were killed on sports fields, in schools, on holidays…

Despite so many testimonies from parents (day, hour, minute when their child was killed), no indictment has ever been filed for sniping at Sarajevo citizens or for any child killed. Thousands of civilians were killed, and the perpetrators have not been held accountable.

The Association of Parents of Killed Children of Besieged Sarajevo has been appealing for indictments to be filed for years. Many parents are no longer alive, and numerous victims will be forgotten, and the judicial system will not recognize them as proven victims.

Fikret Grabovica heads the Association of Parents of Killed Children of Sarajevo. In one of his earlier interviews with Patria, he recalled a document from the BiH Health Protection Institute published in 1996, which stated that 1,601 children had died and 14,946 children had been wounded.

His daughter Irma was 11 years old when she was killed by a shell fired from aggressor positions on Koševsko Brdo on March 20, 1993, while playing.

“It was a sunny day, and my wife allowed Irma to go out with her friends because there was no fighting. And as in most cases when parents allow children to leave basements and shelters, the perpetrators shelled at that moment. My Irma was hit by shrapnel; although she was transferred to KCUS relatively quickly, she bled to death. It is a wound that does not heal,” Grabovica said.

On this day, it marks the 31st anniversary of the deaths of minors Vedran Milas (1979), Amel Terahija (1979), and Sakib Smajić (1977). They were killed by a shell fired from aggressor positions.

No indictment has ever been filed for the war crime in Dobrinja either. During the Bajram tournament on June 1, 1993, a shell was fired from aggressor positions at the parking lot where the tournament was held. 15 people were killed, and about 100 were seriously or lightly wounded.

There are no indictments for the massacres at the Markale market (February 5, 1994, and August 28, 1995) in which civilians were killed. In the two massacres, 111 civilians were killed, and 228 people were wounded.

On January 15, 1993, eight Sarajevans, including two children, were killed in a water queue in Isevića sokak, and 19 civilians were seriously or lightly wounded.

According to available data, more than 1,700 various howitzers, cannons, mortars, multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled guns, over 100 tanks, about 150 armored personnel carriers, and over 500 anti-aircraft guns and machine guns were deployed in positions around Sarajevo, from which daily shelling of the city of Sarajevo and its population was carried out.

At the BiH Prosecutor's Office, two prosecutors are working on investigations into the Siege of Sarajevo, Vesna Ilić and Vladimir Simović. Ilić filed an indictment in the Veliki park case against Dragan Vikić and others for the deaths of eight JNA soldiers, which, after more than five years, ended with a final acquittal.

In another case, known as Dobrovoljačka, in which 10 individuals from the political, military, and police leadership of RBiH are indicted, numerous witnesses for the BiH Prosecutor's Office admitted to sniping and artillery shelling of Sarajevo in May 1992.

From such testimonies, the BiH Prosecutor's Office could have filed more indictments if it had wanted to, instead of equating the aggressor and the victim.

Prosecutor Simović, who is assigned to the Siege of Sarajevo cases, is the author of the famous sentence that he files indictments on the order of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska! He said this in the Čemerno case, where defenders of BiH are also being prosecuted, just as in the case of 'Buljubašić and others'.

However, for the Chief Prosecutor of the BiH Prosecutor's Office, Milanko Kajganić, there is nothing controversial about this. Why would there be, when he himself comes from the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska.