Bosnia identifies 2 more genocide victims found in garden of house

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - Bosnia and Herzegovina announced Tuesday that bone remains found in the garden of a house in the city of Brcko have been identified as belonging to two victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

Emza Fazlic, a spokesperson for the Missing Persons Institute, said a DNA analysis was carried out on the remains, which were found under a pool in the garden in September last year, and it was determined that they belonged to two people killed during the genocide.

Brcko is located 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the town of Srebrenica, the site of the genocide, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed, despite the UN formally declaring the enclave a "safe area."

The Bosniak Muslims were killed when Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch peacekeeping troops.

"DNA analysis showed that the bone remains found belonged to two people who disappeared in Srebrenica in 1995. Other bone remains belonging to the skeletons of these people were also found in different places,'' said Fazlic.

According to Fazlic, these people were buried in a collective funeral in 2021 and 2022 with missing parts of the skeletons.

"We have previously found bone remains buried in the gardens of houses. The homeowners were not aware of it. This is the first time we encountered someone who consciously took the bone remains they found, buried them in the garden of their house, and then had a pool built on top of them,” he said.

It was determined that the remains were brought to Brcko by the owner of the house in 2012 and buried in the garden.

The UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a "safe area" in the spring of 1993. But troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the UN zone. He was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing 2,000 men and boys on July 11, 1995 alone.

About 15,000 residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted them down and killed 6,000 more people.

The bodies of victims have been found in 570 areas across the country.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that a genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.