AMERICAN INVESTIGATOR-PROSECUTORS SHOULD ALSO VISIT BROD

BROD, JULY 15 /SRNA/ - The president of the Organization for the Search for Killed Soldiers and Missing Civilians from Brod, Marko Grabovac, believes that American investigator-prosecutors should also visit Brod, where horrific crimes were also committed against Serb camp inmates and civilians during the last war.

Following the announcement that American investigators are expected to arrive in Derventa on Monday, July 20, Grabovac said they needed to come to Brod as well, so that they could be presented with the expert report on war crimes committed in camps for Serbs in that area, which had previously been submitted to and certified by the Hague Tribunal. He explained that the expert report contains the names and surnames of perpetrators of war crimes against Serbs in Brod and Derventa, as well as those who ordered them, and that the families of those killed and missing have been waiting for justice for more than 30 years. Grabovac noted that members of the Croatian Army and the Croatian Defense Council /HVO/, in cooperation with Muslim forces, operated in the Brod and Derventa areas, and that they left behind several mass graves of Serbs, seven camps and detention facilities through which several hundred Serb detainees passed. He recalled that the first crimes against Serbs were committed in the Brod area and that the first camps for Serbs were established there, as well as that the burning and looting of Serb property were carried out under the command of the Croatian Army, which at the time launched an aggression against BiH. "In the criminal complaint that we submitted in 2001 to the Hague Tribunal, the Prosecutor's Office of BiH and the Croatian judiciary, in addition to Nijaz Čaušević, known as Medo, from Slavonski Brod, a large number of those who ordered and carried out war crimes against Serbs in the Brod area were also included," Grabovac recalled. Members of the Croatian Army and paramilitary Croatian-Muslim formations from the area of the then municipality of Bosanski Brod killed nine Serb civilians on March 26, 1992, in Sijekovac near Brod, which was the first mass crime against Serbs in BiH. Five American investigator-prosecutors in Derventa are expected to arrive in Derventa on Monday, July 20, to take statements from eight former camp inmates about the horrors they endured in the notorious camp for Serbs at the Rabić military warehouse in 1992.