Text by: Dr. sc. Amir Kliko
Source: Patria
On April 23, 1992, the commander of the 30th Partisan Division, Stanislav Galić, ordered the formation of the 1st Partisan Brigade. He appointed Milorad Vukašević, a JNA officer from Serbia, as its commander.
The command post of the brigade was in Šipovo. In its first battalion there were Serbs from Jajaj, in the second from Šipova and in the third from Ključka. Jovo Trkulja was appointed as the commander of the first battalion, and Ljuban Jarčov as his deputy.
Battalion companies were formed according to the territorial principle. The commander of the Jezero company was Zdravko Simetić (later Đoko Jokić), and the commander of the Brišići company was Dušan Malinović. The second battalion of the 1st Partisan Brigade (Shipovački) was commanded by Neđo Gvozdenac, and his deputy was Jovan Pekez. From September 1, 1992, the command of this battalion was taken over by Milorad Ćirko.
In mid-May, JNA units in the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were united with units of the Serbian Territorial Defense and renamed the Army of the Republic of Serbia. Thus, the 30th Partisan Division became the 30th Krajina Division of the 1st Krajina Corps of VRs (formerly the 5th Corps of the JNA). Vukašević remained on the post of commander of the 1st Partisan Brigade until July, and then Slavko Čulić was appointed in his place.
On the night of 26/27. May 1992, units of the 1st Partisan Brigade, reinforced by Serbian militia, carried out a combined artillery-infantry attack on the defenders of Jezera. Around 4 am on May 29, the aggressor units launched an infantry attack again. By June 2, Serbian forces, from the direction of Šipovo and Mrkonjić Grad, occupied Jezero. The Jezero and Brišići companies from the first battalion of the 1st Partisan Brigade, the first company of the second battalion of the 1st Partisan Brigade, tactical group-1 from Ključ and the 3rd Special Purpose Militia Company of the Banja Luka Security Services Center under the command of Milan Suručić participated in the attack. In mastering the Jezera, the Serbian units had no losses, no wounded fighters. The crime they then committed could not have been motivated by revenge.
The majority of the Bosniak population, who found themselves in the Lake at the end of May, transferred during the last nights of May by boat across the lake to the safe shore of Pliva and fled to Jajce. Unprotected Bosniaks from Jezera, Ljoljić, Čerkazović, Zaovina and other nearby villages where they lived, who did not evacuate, were frantically and with impunity killed by criminals. Thus, on June 2 and 3, they killed thirty-four civilians (men, women, old men, women, and children). Some of them were killed in their settlements, and some were taken to other locations and shot. In the Ramić family, all its members were killed, father Sulejman (1931), mother Ajša (1941), daughter Zlatka (1963) and seventeen-year-old daughter Elvira (1975). Three generations of the Karahodžić family were killed: grandfather Adem (1928), his son Nisvet (1955) and Nisvet's fourteen-year-old son Adnan (1978). Adem's younger brother Kasim (1943) and his thirteen-year-old son Selvedin (1979) were also killed. And Adem's older brother Muharem (1926) was also killed. Old woman Behija Mulaosmanović (1923) and her son Salih (1951) were also killed.
The oldest man killed was Rasim Ribić (1908). His wife Fatma (1916) was killed with him. Older spouses Ibro (1909) and Ferida Zjajo (1910) were also killed. The oldest murdered woman was Mevla Bešlić (1906), an 86-year-old woman. Eight more old men and women were killed: Adem Ribić (1912), Muho Ribić (1915), Muho Šuškić (1915), Aziz Balešić (1918), Zuhra Šuškić (1924), Hatidža Rešidović (1924), Hašima Ribić (1927), Safeta Ramić (1928) and Muradif Zahirović (1930).
The remaining murdered men were aged between 29 and 65: Jasmin Žerić (1963), Senad Đukla (1959), Nihad Ribić (1954), Bakir Filipović (1943), Edhem Šuškić (1942), Gane Ahmečković (1938), Ahmet Plivac (1934) and Huso Ćosić (1933).
Almost all those killed were in close marital and family ties. This massacre of the Jezera Bosniaks is the most massive crime in terms of the number of people killed in the municipality of Jajak. Considering the age and gender structure and the close mutual kinship of the victims, it can be said that this is an example of the crime of genocide in a narrow geographical area. And the next - in terms of the number of victims - mass Serbian crime against the Jajaci civilian population happened again against the Jezera Bosniaks. On September 10, 1992, the Serbian army and militia took twenty-eight Bosniaks from the villages of Ljoljići and Čerkazovići, near Jezera, and shot them. Four of them, although seriously wounded, survived. Only one boy survived without being injured. Again, the victims were members of the same families, children, old people, women and men. For some of them, close family members and relatives were killed on June 2 and 3, 1992.
After criminals killed thirty-four Bosniaks from Jezera on June 2 and 3, the command of the 1st Partisan Brigade formed a working group - headed by Nikola Udovicic - and tasked it with determining the number of victims and the circumstances under which they were killed. The task force quickly conducted a formal investigation that did not even establish personal information about the victims or anything related to the perpetrators of the crime. She also compiled a short "report on the situation in the Lake after the cleaning operation." The report has only six short sentences. It stated that it was not possible to determine the exact number of captured persons, who were then killed, but the working group learned that "the figure of 18 liquidated persons is mentioned." It was allegedly unable to determine either "who captured them, to whom they were handed over, who listened to them and who provided security for them." They were killed by infantry weapons. Pero Dević, commander of the Ljoljići platoon from the Jezera company, stated that there was no armed resistance in the direction of his platoon's operations. His platoon captured "four members of the Ramić Sulejman family and handed them over to the unit from Jezera to escort them further, they later found out that they had been killed." The report emphasized that all the victims were from the category of civilians. From this modest report, however, it can be seen that the Jezera Bosniaks were killed by their Serb neighbors.
This did not prevent Serbian propaganda from portraying the captured - and then killed - Bosniak civilians as military victims of the defenders of Jezera. The Banja Luka newspaper Glas wrote on June 5 that the victims allegedly died in armed confrontations.
The criminals, who killed the Bosniaks from Jezera on June 2 and 3, were not prosecuted. No one from the Serbian army was responsible, even in terms of command. All the aforementioned commanders and unit commanders, who were in Jezera on June 2 and 3, remained at their posts and were later promoted to VRs. At the beginning of July, Milorad Vukašević was transferred to the army of the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Stanislav Galić remained on the post of commander of the 30th Division until September 10, 1992, and was then appointed commander of the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps of the VRs. On the Jajace battlefield, he mastered the art of terrorizing and killing civilians in villages and towns under siege, and he successfully used the experience he gained to terrorize Sarajevo in besieged Sarajevo. In 2006, the International Tribunal for War Crimes Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia sentenced him to life imprisonment for terrorizing and killing Sarajevo civilians. The verdict did not charge him with numerous individual and mass war crimes against the Bosniak and Croat population - committed by members of his division in the area of municipalities that were in its area of responsibility (Jajce, Šipovo, Mrkonjić Grad, Ključ and Donji Vakuf) during the time when was he in command of it - as well as for terrorizing and killing Jajaci civilians under the siege of his division.
Jovo Blažanović took over command of the division from Galić. On the same day, several members of the 1st Partisan Brigade (then already renamed the 1st Krajina Brigade) - which at the time was commanded by Slavko Čulić - carried out the aforementioned massacre of Bosniaks from the Lake villages of Loljići and Čerkazovići with several members of the Serbian civilian militia from Jezera . This increased the number of killed Jezera Bosniaks to fifty-seven civilians. Four boys were among the killed Bosniaks from Ljoljić and Čerkazović. Two of them were brothers, Asmer (born 1977) and Adis Zobić (born 1983). They were shot with their mother, Fikret. Their father was seriously wounded but survived. Another boy from the Zobić family, thirteen-year-old Adnan, was killed with his grandmother Đula (1924), and from the Bajramović family, his peer Sabahudin (1979). The boy Mustafa Bajramović survived the shooting.
For this crime, although eleven criminals participated in it, only four were convicted (Zoran, son of Branko, Marić; Mirko, son of Mile, Pekez; Mirko, son of Špira, Pekez and Milorad, son of Ljupko, Savić). The judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina knows the names of all participants in the crime. They are listed in the judgments of convicted criminals. The organizer of the crime, Jovo Jandrić, is not available to the judicial authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbian citizenship protects him from extradition to Bosnia and Herzegovina's judiciary. Neither for this crime - nor for the crime on June 2 and 3 - was anyone held accountable for their command duties. If the Serbian military and civilian authorities had reacted adequately to the perpetrators of the crimes on June 2 and 3 in Jezera - among whom there were probably those who committed the crime on September 10 - this latest massacre probably would not have happened. However, the absence of any adequate reaction by those authorities and their sanctions showed criminals that they can kill defenseless and completely innocent Bosniak civilians with impunity.
Of the fifty-seven lake victims, seven were children (one girl and six boys). Another boy was taken out to be shot, but survived.