Goran Sarić arrested for crimes in Bijeljina

(Patria) - Former commander of the Special Brigade of the Republika Srpska police, Goran Sarić – who was definitively acquitted by the State Court in two cases for genocide in Srebrenica and war crimes in Sarajevo – was arrested today in Bijeljina, on suspicion of participating in the murder of 22 civilians in the area of this city, was unofficially confirmed for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH).

This information was previously published by istraga.ba. 

Members of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), by order of the BiH Prosecutor's Office, arrested seven people in the Bijeljina and Sokolac areas, including, as BIRN BiH has learned, Goran Sarić.

The BiH Prosecutor's Office announced that they suspect them of participating in the murder of 22 civilians of Bosniak nationality in the Bijeljina area, including seven minors and eight women.

According to the BiH Prosecutor's Office statement, they were killed in Balatun near Bijeljina.

Among the suspects who were arrested are individuals accused of directly participating in the executions of civilian victims.

Sarić was acquitted by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in two cases for crimes committed in Sarajevo in 1992 and for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.

In 2018, he was acquitted of the charge that he issued instructions, and also controlled his deputy Ljubomir Borovčanin – who was sentenced to 17 years in prison by the Hague Tribunal for crimes in Srebrenica – and that he assisted members of a joint criminal enterprise in committing genocide in which more than 7,000 people were killed and around 40,000 displaced.

In July 2019, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina published an interview with Sarić, in which he said that the crime in Srebrenica must not be denied, but he noted that he did not know who committed it or why it happened because he was in the field in the Sarajevo area at the time.

Before the indictment for Srebrenica, Sarić was tried for crimes committed in Sarajevo.

In November 2014, the Court of BiH definitively acquitted Sarić of the charge that, as the head of the Public Security Station (SJB) Centar, he supervised and participated in the separation of men who were held in the Jagomir Psychiatric Hospital in Sarajevo.

“Nobody knew what was happening, nor did anyone have a solution. Regardless of whether I was a police official or a manager – or later, in the second phase of the war, a commander – I could not influence any decision, any battle, any event. You went spontaneously, what you were ordered to do and what had to be done when it was war. Terrible, God forbid anyone,” Sarić said earlier in an interview with BIRN BiH.

According to BIRN BiH information, the arrested individuals are suspected of the murder of 22 members of the Sarajlić, Sejmenović, and Malagić families, including seven children, who were taken from their homes in the Bukreš neighborhood of Bijeljina, where they lived, and killed at dawn on September 25, 1992, in the village of Balatun on the banks of the Drina River in the Bijeljina area.

The remains of 13 bodies were found in the cemetery in Sremska Mitrovica in 2002, buried under unknown labels. By 2011, 18 victims had been found and buried, and four are still listed as missing. According to the knowledge of the competent services, that crime was committed by members of the special unit of the MUP of Republika Srpska, known as “Pahuljice” (Snowflakes).