Plenkovic to attend Srebrenica genocide commemoration

Hina has learned that Plenkovic will be among the speakers at the commemoration, which is expected to be attended by a number of European officials, including European Council President Antonio Costa, numerous foreign ministers and other officials from European countries.

Also attending will be Gabriela Gatti Santana, president of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the successor to the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz.

The commemoration is once again intended to highlight the scale of the worst war crime committed on European soil since World War II, when in July 1995, following the fall of the Srebrenica enclave, which was under UN protection, more than 8,000 Bosniaks, mostly men and boys, were killed.

Seven victims whose remains were found in mass graves will be buried on 11 July. The remains were found in fragments, as the mass graves had been repeatedly dug up in attempts to conceal the traces of the crime.

In the Tuzla mortuary, the partial remains of 45 victims have been stored. Their identities were confirmed through DNA analysis, comparing samples with the blood of surviving relatives. However, families have not yet given consent for burial, hoping the remains will be completed after additional exhumations and the discovery of yet undiscovered mass graves.

In Potocari, where the Srebrenica Memorial Centre is located, the remains of more than 6,700 genocide victims have been buried so far. The search continues for the bodies of at least 1,000 more.