Bosnia war death toll put at less than 150,000

SARAJEVO, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The death toll from Bosnia's 1992-95 war, widely estimated at at least 200,000, was less than 150,000, a leading war crimes researcher said on Friday.

In an interview with Reuters, Mirsad Tokaca said his team had completed 80 percent of the work to establish the exact number of Muslims, Serbs and Croats killed in the conflict, which became known as a war of "ethnic cleansing".

About 70 percent of victims were Muslims, Tokaca said, rebutting internet rumours that his Investigation and Documentation Centre would show the toll was about the same on all three sides.

"We can now say with almost absolute certainty that the number is going to be more than 100,000 but definitely less than 150,000," Tokaca, an ethnic Muslim, said by telephone.

Asked about reports circulating on Serbian weblogs that his figures disproved the accepted fact that Muslims were by far the main victims, he said he was unaware of such a story but could deny it completely.

"Based on initial results, although I am reluctant to go into this at this point, Serbs make up some 25 percent, Croats 5 percent and Muslims the rest," he said.

A team of six professional researchers and 20 volunteers, funded by the Norwegian government, has created a computerised database with 250,000 names of people listed in a multitude of sources as civilians or soldiers killed in the war.

"Many people were listed as killed in two, three or even four different sources which until now would be simply added up without checking if some names were being duplicated," he said.

For example, a Muslim refugee from an eastern Bosnian village would be listed as a refugee by various civilian authorities and police, and as a soldier by the military he had joined in the meantime.

Prosecuting war criminals and tracing the fate of more than 15,000 people still missing are seen as indispensable tasks for the process of reconciliation in Bosnia, as it struggles to bridge ethnic divisions and integrate into Europe.

It was "part of the process of facing up to the past", Tokaca said. "This is for the victims and without this you can't move forward."

The research included checking newspaper reports, civilian, medical, police and military files as well as visiting graves, where it is possible, and than comparing data.

"After cross-referencing, we have whittled down the number of those killed to about 80,000 right now," Tokaca said, adding that he expected the project, which has been under way for a year, to be completed in about two months.

"We will soon move to the final phase involving only professionals who will produce an analysis of what we have found," he said.

Tokaca, who has investigated and documented war crimes for the past 12 years and has cooperated with U.N. war crimes investigators, said the work of his team is all the more credible because it involves Bosnians from all sides.

The team has used the Red Cross database of missing people as one of the sources for its research and has also cooperated with United Nations Hague tribunal for war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia, to whom it will forward its findings.

The project drew however, has drawn no attention from Bosnian authorities, Tokaca said. "They are simply not interested". But Norway agreed to fund the work with 300,000 Bosnian marka.

"Many people were listed as killed in two, three or even four different sources which until now would be simply added up without checking if some names were being duplicated," he said.
For example, a Muslim refugee from an eastern Bosnian village would be listed as a refugee by various civilian authorities and police, and as a soldier by the military he had joined in the meantime.

If a person is listed as both a civilian refugee and a soldier, this would be making those soldiers who died in battle as being counted once or twice as a "civilian" who died, falsely inflating the statistics on civilians killed.

Many Muslims did leave places of Serb majority simply to join the Muslim army. In fact, 2 Serbs were tortured into confessing killing Muslims who were, years later (1996) discovered alive and well, and had been in the Bosnian Muslim army in Sarajevo throughout the war.

That's what Tokaca has been doing, whittling down the numbers of those killed by cross-checking records. The figures he has arrived are a result of that.

Well no duh! I'm amazed anyone thought that 200 were dying a day while the Sarajevo government claimed 71 killed (Tulza) was their worst daily toll of the war.

250,000 dead in Bosnia is every bit as absurd as 100,000 in Iraq.

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