Goražde, the hero city, is shrouded in great sadness. Muriz Hadžiahmetović, a former member of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and winner of the highest award for war merits, the "Golden Lily", took his own life on the night from Sunday to Monday.
Namely, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested six Gorazdan fighters of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the holder of the highest war award "Golden Lily" Hadžiahmetović aka Murga, on charges of alleged war crimes.
And while they are arresting, persecuting and prosecuting the heroes who defended Bosnia and Herzegovina from the aggressors, they went bare-handed against the aggressor soldiers, armed to the teeth, for the multi-year siege, the destruction of the city of Goražde and the killing of thousands of people, including children - there are no convicted members of the VRS. The fact that to date only one indictment has been confirmed for war crimes against the besieged Bosniak population of Goražde, in the UN protected zone, is killing the surviving citizens and relatives of the victims.
For crimes against Bosniaks in this area, directives and commands, orders, reports of the Army and the leadership of the RS are available to the prosecutor's office, from which the planners and perpetrators of the most serious war crimes and violations of the laws and customs of war in the period from April 1992 to December 1995 can be easily identified.
Asst. Ph.D. Ermin Kuka, senior research associate of the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law of the University of Sarajevo, comments for Preporod.info on the devastating truth that those who defended Bosnia and Herzegovina are equated with war criminals.
- The fact that we must constantly remind is that classic armed aggression was carried out against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995, when horrible and heinous, mass and individual crimes were committed against Bosniaks, including the crime of genocide.
27 years have passed since the aggression, and all the perpetrators of crimes against Bosniaks have not been brought to justice and prosecuted. In fact, today something quite the opposite is happening, not to say paradoxical, and that is that the competent prosecutor's offices and court authorities are dealing with the prosecution of defenders, members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who stood up to defend their families, their property, their homeland. They are on trial only because they stood up for those who were already targeted to disappear, only because they are Bosniaks - says Kuka.
He adds that the institutions that should take care of them left the defenders to fight on their own.
- Due to the lack of any support, some of them decided on radical measures, such as this example of taking their own life. They do this because of the great injustice done to them. We live in a time of narratives aimed at equating the criminal and the victim, the aggressor and the defender, which consciously and deliberately aims to falsify historically established facts at the highest judicial instances in Europe and the world. This is a devastating fact that we are witnessing more and more, especially in recent times. In fact, it is a well-prepared and practically implemented strategy of those who protect criminals and try to hide their crimes, and here, above all, I mean the current leadership of the RS entity and the district prosecutor's offices of that entity, with the indispensable support of the neighboring Republic of Serbia. There are certainly mistakes by the representatives of those who should stand, not only to protect the members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also to work on the prosecution of the members of the so-called VRS, which are known to have committed crimes against Bosniak civilians, and are still walking freely in the same places and cities where they committed crimes - said Kuka.
He states that individual district and cantonal prosecutor's offices applied, in accordance with the Revised Strategy, to projects with international organizations, through which they engaged and employed additional personnel (prosecutors) who are exclusively engaged in the investigation of war crimes.
- Their work is financed by those organizations. In addition to the prosecutor, employed investigators and professional associates who work and assist prosecutors in war crimes cases are also engaged in the same way. According to the available and available data, I did not notice that, for example, the specific Cantonal Prosecutor's Office of the Bosnian-Podrinje Canton applied for such a project at all. Also, the Police Directorate of the MUP did not fulfill the obligation related to the formation of a separate organizational unit which, according to the Strategy, would exclusively deal with cases of war crimes, as requested in the Strategy, Dr. Hook.
He also referred to the claim that the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not prosecute aggressors and war criminals.
- It is a fact that non-prosecution or insufficient prosecution of criminal acts of war crimes is a perennial problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In December 2008, the State Strategy for working on war crimes cases was adopted, which provided for the resolution of priority and most complex cases by 2015. Since the goal was not met, the Revised Strategy was adopted in May 2018, which extended the deadline until 2023 (a deadline set by the authorities themselves, and confirmed by the OSCE in June 2022). Despite this, adequate steps were not taken in hundreds of cases where the Hague Tribunal found sufficient evidence to indict. The judicial deadlock in the prosecution of former members of the so-called VRS. The results in this regard are almost devastating. Jurisdiction was transferred from the Hague Tribunal to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina - A list, with the names of 848 persons, where sufficient evidence was obtained for the indictment. But a special problem is that a significant number of these persons are inaccessible to the judicial authorities - says Kuka.
Many people, he explains, are outside the country, inaccessible to justice, and if they are tried, they are tried before the judicial organs of the country they fled to, and not before the court of the country where they committed the crimes.
He points out that according to data from the OSCE Mission to BiH from September 2022, 44 accused are hiding in Serbia, 38 in Croatia, while 19 accused are hiding in Montenegro, Sweden, Switzerland and France.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina has agreements with Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia on the extradition of those accused of criminal offences, but those accused of war crimes are excluded from the agreement. The cases are in the Prosecutor's Office and the question is whether and when they will be prosecuted at all - Kuka points out.
He adds that, in addition to documentation, evidence, names of perpetrators of crimes, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has recently been quite selective in dealing with war crimes cases, where the focus has shifted to prosecuting members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- The Serbs, that is, the aggressor forces, committed war crimes in dozens of municipalities, established death camps, and today the perpetrators of these crimes move freely throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, precisely because of the inconsistency and irresponsibility of the prosecution. Many institutions sent and are sending numerous reports to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina against former members of the so-called VRS, but there is no feedback. The question is whether and when these cases will be prosecuted, whether we are waiting for the criminals to die of natural causes - says Kuka.
He cited the example of Dragiša Masal, a professional officer of the former JNA and lieutenant general of the so-called VRS.
- Dragiša Masal, in the order for further aggressive actions in the operation to attack Goražde called "Zvijezda 94", dated April 11, 1994, complied with the order of the war criminal Ratko Mladić, which stated, among other things:
"Push energetically forward, do not look back at what is happening around us. The Turks must disappear from these areas."
He is remembered as the person who commanded, directed and ordered the actions of TG "Višegrad" which resulted in numerous individual and mass murders of civilians in the wider area of Višegrad and Goražde. Since he died in 2017, he was not prosecuted and convicted as a war criminal. There are a number of other criminals, for whom the Hague Tribunal has obtained sufficient evidence and whose names are known, but the Prosecutor's Office is not prosecuting them yet - reminds Dr. Hook.
He notes that the city of Goražde was under siege by Serbian (aggressor) forces, and by Resolution 824 of the UN Security Council of May 6, 1993, it was one of the six cities in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that received the status of a UN "safe zone" a.
However, the extent to which Goražde was actually an unsafe zone is most indicatively proven by the document of the Command of TG "Višegrad", entitled Plan of tour, assistance and control of b/g and discipline at the combat positions of units of TG "Višegrad", delivered to the command of the Drina Corps of the so-called Army of the Republika Srpska on approval, dated November 29, 1993. In that document, which was signed by the commander-colonel Dragiša Masal, the responsibilities of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Podrinja light infantry brigades in the TG "Višegrad", with by the task that reads:
"Informing fighters and elders with the aim of raising combat morale and discipline to a higher level and activities to make the opposing side's position in protected enclaves as insecure as possible."
- The civilian population of Goražde was subjected to a campaign of continuous sniper and artillery action, shelling, as well as the creation of such conditions that were supposed to lead to the complete or partial destruction of the group (Bosniaks) as such, which is one of the crimes of genocide. To this day, no one has been prosecuted for those crimes.
According to the research of colleague Dr. According to Muamer Džananović's book published in 2015, 120 children were killed in Goražde during the siege, and 428 of them were wounded. Each member of the so-called The VRS, which was on the lines of the besieged Goražde, is a potential criminal. In addition, there are orders to shell civilian targets, such as the market, mosque, hospital, post office... However, despite the fact that there is relevant documentary material on the direct responsibility, especially command responsibility, of individual perpetrators of crimes, no one has been prosecuted. Therefore, it is necessary that all competent authorities, especially in the Bosnian-Podrinje Canton (Prosecutor's Office, Police Directorate, MUP) devote themselves to these issues in their full capacity, as this is in the service of contributing to the full truth about the siege of Goražde during the time of aggression and the fight against the narrative of equalization victim and criminal - says dr. Hook.
On this occasion, we remind you that Preporod.info has so far written to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina on several occasions asking why they are not arresting war criminals who spread death throughout Goražde, killed women, children and the elderly, raped women and expelled the population. We never got the answers to any of the questions.
(A.N./Preporod.info)