TUŠEVLJAK: ATROCITIES AGAINST SARAJEVO SERBS BEAR ALL HALLMARKS OF GENOCIDE

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, OCTOBER 25 /SRNA/ – Thirty-two years have passed since the brutal crimes committed against Sarajevo Serbs, who were killed by members of the so-called Army of BiH and thrown into the Kazani pit on the slopes of Mount Trebević above Sarajevo. Longtime inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska for war crimes investigations, Simo Tuševljak, told SRNA that this crime bears all the hallmarks of genocide.

Tuševljak pointed out that the Bosniak side has been trying to conceal the Kazani crime, as well as all other crimes and detention centers for Serbs in the Sarajevo area. "The victims thrown into the Kazani pit were of Serb nationality, including even those Serbs who were members of the so-called Army of BiH", Tuševljak said. He emphasized that even today, 32 years after the crime, the truth is being hidden. He reminded that in 1993, the intelligence service of the so-called Army of BiH sent a memorandum to the wartime Presidency of the Republic of BiH confirming that the crime committed at Kazani bore all the hallmarks of genocide. "If genocide was committed in BiH, then it was committed against the Serbs in Sarajevo", Tuševljak stressed. According to him, all those who admitted to these crimes received minimal sentences, while those who did not confess were never held accountable. "Alija Izetbegović granted them amnesty in 1996 and 1997 and gifted them freedom, thereby blessing the crimes committed at Kazani", Tuševljak said. He added that there are witness statements identifying family members’ bodies during the on-site investigation in November or December 1993, when the bodies were being retrieved from the Kazani pit. "We have the statement of a Bosniak woman who said she recognized her husband among 200 corpses", said Tuševljak. He stated that 117 bodies removed from the pit were hidden from the public, but that mortuary records from the Koševo Hospital still exist. According to him, the pit was later filled with concrete and garbage to prevent access and further exhumations. "In doing so, they also concealed the full scale of the crimes committed against Serbs. Even the killing of /Mušan Topalović/ Caco was an attempt to cover up the crimes", Tuševljak said. It is suspected that from 1992 to 1995, more than a hundred bodies of murdered Sarajevo Serbs were thrown into pits on Mount Trebević. The Serbs were killed by members of the 10th Mountain Brigade of the so-called Army of BiH, commanded by pre-war Sarajevo criminal Mušan Topalović, known as Caco. From 1991 to 1993, members of the so-called Army of BiH conducted raids, capturing Serbs on the streets and in their apartments in Sarajevo, taking them to dig trenches on Trebević, where the Kazani pit is located. In addition to the Kazani pit, on November 15, 2021, the Sarajevo City Council unveiled a memorial dedicated to murdered Sarajevo Serbs from 1992 and 1993. The inscription on the Kazani monument sparked controversy, as the plaque does not mention the perpetrators or the victims’ ethnicity—only their names. The monument bears the Latin-script names of Marko and Nevenka Bošković, Dragomir Ćeranić, Mileva Drašković, Ranko Frankić-Brkljača, Duško Jovanović, Marina and Radoslav Komljenac, Ana and Vasilj Lavriv, Novka Lemez, Ergin Nikolić, Branislav Radosavljević, Predrag Šalipur, Ago Šteta, Zoran Vučurević, and Stojan Žuže. Last year, during the night between September 28 and 29, the Kazani monument was desecrated — the words “Caco lives in us” were spray-painted in red on the memorial. According to data from the Association of Detainees of Republika Srpska, there were 126 detention camps for Serbs in Sarajevo during the war. The Independent International Commission for the Investigation of the Suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo (1991–1995) reported that about 3,000 Serb civilians were killed, and 1,700 seriously wounded. Out of the 2,907 murdered civilians, 714 — or 25 percent — were killed at their own doorsteps.