A collective funeral service was held Monday at the Kamicani Memorial Center in Kozarac near the northern city Prijedor, for six Bosniak victims who will finally find peace 28 years after their death.
The service was led by Bosnia's Grand Mufti Husein Kavazovic, after which families buried their loved ones.
Kavazovic expressed his belief that the day will come when the criminals who committed this and other crimes against Bosniaks will look their victims in the eye and be held accountable for their crimes.
“The horrific crimes in the Sana river valley and throughout Bosnia are the best proof that the genocide in Srebrenica was only the final act of a joint criminal enterprise, with genocidal intent, which began here in Prijedor, for the purpose of destroying our people. Everything we've witnessed here today proves the fact that that the crimes from 1992 were not sporadic or incidental, but carefully planned, in every municipality where bare-handed citizens failed to organize and defend themselves,” he said.
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Five of the six buried victims were found at Koricani cliffs where over 200 Bosniak and Croat men on August 21, 1992, during the Bosnian War. The sixth victim was found at Bosanska Gradiska municipality, on the border with Croatia.
The ceremony was also attended by the Bosniak Leader Bakir Izetbegovic and Bosniak member of Bosnia's Presidency Sefik Dzaferovic.
Izetbegovic warned that the Serb people should be concerned.
“The Serb people should be concerned by the fact that there are so many people from among their ranks ready to kill their neighbours in cold blood. It's difficult for me to say this, but that there are so many people who are ready to deny the genocide and to relativize it,” he said.
Genocide must not be relativized or denied, aggressors and defenders mustn't be equated – the SDA leader noted.
Dzaferovic reiterated that the crimes in and around Prijedor were systemic.
“The crime that took place in Prijedor is a systematic, joint criminal enterprise aimed at eliminating the non-Serb population and it has all the elements of genocide. I am sorry that courts did not qualify this as genocide,” he said, adding that, he would not stop fighting for the crime in Prijedor, but also crimes in other cities, to get the right qualification.
