Eighty-two unidentified victims of Srebrenica genocide might be buried this year along with the remains of four victims whose identities have been confirmed by their families, a committee in charge of organising the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica said on Monday.
The board will pass the final decision in the upcoming period.
“Besides four identified victims of genocide from July 1995, whose families gave the consent for the prayer and burial, there are also the victims at the Tuzla identification centre whose families did not agree to have them buried because their body remains are incomplete,” said Amor Masovic of the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Remains of the victims whose identity is unknown, Masovic said, are definitely the genocide victims “because they were exhumed from the same mass graves where the identified victims were found.”
“Unfortunately, those victims don't have a name and surname because they don't have close relatives whose blood would be used for DNA analysis,” he added.
Every year, since 2003, the victims’ remains are buried at the Potocari memorial, eastern Bosnia, on July 11.
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In April 1993, the UN had declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe area under UN protection.
However, in July 1995, the Dutch battalion failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.
More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the days following July 11, 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 have been found and buried.
The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.
