The green coffins containing the remains of nine victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica Genocide are waiting at the facilities of the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial Center to be buried on Saturday, at the commemoration event marking the 25th anniversary of the massacre which former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, described the worst crime on European soil since WWII.
Sead Hasanovic, Alija Suljic, Hasan Pezic, Hasib Hasanovic, Zuhdija Avdagic, Bajro Salihovic, Ibrahim Zukanovicc, Salko Ibisevic and Kemal Music are only the latest of thousands of genocide victims whose remains were found throughout the past 25 years.
Many of them are, however, still missing.
The youngest of the victims to be buried on Saturday is Salko Ibisevic, who was only 23 years old when he was killed.
The oldest of them is Hasan Pezic, who was 70 at the time of his death.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave and rounded up the town’s Muslim Bosniaks, separated men from women and little children and systematically executed some 8,000 men and boys.
The bodies of the victims were dumped into numerous mass graves in the area.
Forensic experts excavate them and identify the bones through DNA analysis before returning the bodies to the families every year. They then rebury them on July 11 at the Memorial Centre’s cemetery.
Two international courts, The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.
