Posted on 09/24/2004 10:49:26 AM PDT by mark502inf
KEVLJANI, Bosnia - Forensic experts said Friday they had found remains of 182 people, believed to have been wartime prisoners killed by Bosnian Serb forces, in a mass grave in western Bosnia and that they expected to find more.
"So far we have exhumed 182 complete and incomplete bodies," said Jasmin Odobasic, an official of the Commission for Missing Persons of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation. "Certainly there are 30-50 more bodies in the grave."
The experts, working since mid-August, dug about five meters down into the mass grave, the second found in the village of Kevljani near the town of Prijedor.
The bottom of the grave, located in the field near houses, was covered with skulls and bones. Remains were placed in white plastic bags on the edges of the hole.
The U.N. investigators unearthed in 1999 the remains of close to 150 people in the first mass grave found in the village. The victims had been detainees in the Serb-run Omarska detention camp, located only a kilometer away.
Early in the 1992-95 Bosnian War, thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were held, killed or tortured in the camps of Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, near Prijedor. Nearly 3,500 people went missing from Prijedor alone, and about 1,000 are still unaccounted for.
Odobasic said that documents found on some bodies in the second Kevljani grave showed that the victims were also Omarska prisoners.
"We have found 20 documents, three of persons of Croat nationality and 17 belonging to persons of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) nationality, and witnesses said that all of them were detained in Omarska camp," Odobasic told Reuters at the site.
He said that some 4,000 bodies of non-Serbs had been exhumed from 110 mass graves in the wider western Krajina region. Only about half have been identified so far.
About 29,000 people, mostly Muslims, went missing in the war. The remains of around 18,000 have been found -- including about 5,000 of up to 8,000 Muslims killed by Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995 -- and 10,000 identified.
The Kevljani grave is a so-called secondary mass grave, where remains have been moved from another site to hide evidence of the killings. There were several layers in the grave and it is believed the bodies were dumped there at different times.
Odobasic said that bullets had been found in some 20 bodies. "When we wash the clothes and examine the bones we will have much better clues about the method of execution," he said.
Asim Jakupovic, a former camp inmate, came to the grave site searching for relatives who went missing in Omarska.
"I believe that many of those who went missing from Omarska will be found here," he said.
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The important thing for all of us to do is to keep tallying up the body counts for each side and keep bickering about who killed who and how many.
Of course there's a chance that it could turn out that these are actually dead Serbs in that hole. Gee. Then I'll be able to say, "See see? The Muslims and Croats committed attrocities too!"
Boy... won't that be a great moment for me? Ugh.
Secondly when it comes to Kosovo Albanian attitudes towards UNMIK now a days (or rather during the March pogrom) I'ld just like to point out something from an article I posted here from CSMonitor on this subject. The article has been posted here for your full reading: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1223513/posts
"Early this year, an estimated 50,000 Albanians lashed out against the two forces now seen as blocking Kosovar ambitions for independence - ethnic Serbs and, more surprising, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The riots here in March left a brutal tally of 19 killed, 1,000 injured, Serb homes and churches burned - and dozens of UNMIK vehicles torched."
Altough it says only UNMIK vehicles were torched there is a statement at the end of the article which is rather worrying:
But any alternative short of statehood, or even perpetuating the status quo, may trigger more violence- against minorities, against UNMIK, even among Albanians. "In March we opened their eyes a little, for them to see what can happen in the future," says Redenica, the war-invalids leader. "We're dedicated to independence. And whoever gets in the way, Albanians will not take it calmly."
Jane, ignore this article due for its propensity of skewered news releases.
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