Bosniak, Serb and Croat war veterans gathered at the Koricani Cliffs on Friday to pay their respects to about 200 Bosniak and Croat civilians killed there in one of the worst atrocities committed during the 1992-1995 war.
The veterans from the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), The Croat Defence Council, (HVO) and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) came together on an initiative by the Centre for Nonviolent Action, an organisation with offices in Belgrade and Sarajevo which has organised numerous similar visits to commemorations for victims of all ethnic groups across the region.
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On August 21, 1992, Bosnian Serb police officers rounded up the mostly Bosniak and Croat men detained at the prison camps around the northwestern town of Prijedor and told them they were to be exchanged for Serb prisoners of war.
The Prijedor intervention squad officers instead took the men to the Koricani Cliffs in central Bosnia. They lined them up on a cliff facing down the abyss, ordered them to kneel, and shot them in the back.
The bodies fell down the more than 200 metre-high cliffs.
Eleven members of the Bosnian Serb police in Prijedor were sentenced to prison for their involvement in the Koricani Cliffs massacre.
“The Koricani Cliffs are one of the sites of mass killings of the non-Serb population of Prijedor, and by coming here we want to once again pay tribute to the victims and point out the importance of prosecuting those responsible for crimes and working to find the remains of the victims,” said Amer Delic, a Bosnian Army veteran and member of the NGO.
“As war veterans, we feel a responsibility and an obligation to show respect to all victims and their families and to point out the importance of remembering the victims of such crimes. We once again point out that this site is an unmarked place of suffering, and we call on the competent authorities to allow the victims to mark this place,” he stressed.
“After they survived the prison camps they went to be exchanged and they certainly felt some hope and joy, but unfortunately they ended up in this 200-meter-deep abyss,” said former Republika Srpska Army member Djoko Pupcevic.
“Unfortunately, not all criminals who committed the crime were prosecuted, those people who committed it should come out themselves, report and serve a sentence for what they did,” he said.
