Bosnia’s Defence Minister Zukan Helez said on his Facebook profile that he wants to send a message from Grabovica "that war should not happen anywhere, ever again, and that no one should ever be killed".

“A crime is a crime, regardless of who committed it. Every mother grieves equally for her child, every child cries equally for their parents. Every victim deserves respect”, Helez said after paying tribute to Croat civilians who were killed by members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993.

“In the town of Grabovica, between Mostar and Jablanica, I paid tribute and laid flowers to the murdered civilians, members of the Croat ethnicity. On the night of September 8-9, 1993, irresponsible members of the RBiH Army killed 33 civilians. The murder of Mladenko Zadro, who was just under 4 years old, the murder of the old man Marko Maric who was 87 years old, the murder of 17 women is not and cannot be a legitimate military objective. A crime is a crime, regardless of who committed it,” Helez wrote.

He said that he wants to send a message from Grabovica “that there should be no war anywhere, ever again, and that no one should ever be killed.”

He called on “all other politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina to pay tribute to all the victims, not just the victims from their own people. This is the only way we can build Bosnia and Herzegovina and a better future.”

To date, five RBiH Army members have been sentenced for this crime. Former members of the RBiH Army were held accountable for individual murders before the domestic courts, but none for war crimes against the civilian population and under command responsibility. Mustafa Hota was sentenced to nine years in prison, Enes Sakrak to ten years, while Nihad Vlahovljak, Sead Karagic and Haris Rajkic were sentenced to 13 years in prison each.

The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia acquitted Sefer Halilovic, Chief of the Main Staff of the Supreme Command of the RBiH Army, of criminal responsibility of the crime in Grabovica.

Earlier, Josip Dreznjak from the Association of Croat Victims of Grabovica ‘93 said that only two complete bodies were found, all the rest were incomplete.

“Those people exist, they were buried, they were thrown into the Neretva River, we know that, we also know that there are still buried bodies, but there is no will to solve it,” Dreznjak said. The search for the bodies of 17 victims is still ongoing.