The families of the genocide of Srebrenica finally entered their dead

Tribute

Certain victims of the massacre perpetrated by the Serbian forces of Bosnia in July 1995, were offered a burial. Relatives testify, sometimes tears in their eyes.

Rusmir Smajilhodzic / AFP

Officially, Sejdalija and Hasib were found and will be buried on Friday, 30 years after the genocide of Srebrenica in which they perished. But their loved ones will only put in the ground only a bone or two, Hoping that it is enough to bring peace to the dead, and to the living.

These two victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Serbian forces of Bosnia in July 1995 will be buried with thousands of others already identified. Of the 8,000 Muslim men and adolescents killed in Srebrenica, 1000, however, remain missing.

“Everyone called him Brko (on: moustachu, a Bosnia). I have never seen it without its mustache. What a seducer this one! ”Remember with a little smile Mirzeta Karic, who liked to spend his days with his father, Sejdalija Alic.

“I don’t have it never again reviewed»

In December 1993, more than a year after the start of the war in Bosnia, Brko and his daughter, who was 18 years old, were the last to flee their village of Jagodnja, 25 kilometers from Srebrenica, taken under the fire of the Serbian forces of Bosnia.

This city of eastern Bosnia had been declared security zone by the United Nations and tens of thousands of Muslims joined it hoping to find some peace. They will be trapped there.

At the beginning of spring 1994, Mirzeta was again on the road, evacuated from Srebrenica in a convoy of the Red Cross, with his mother and her sister-in-law, then pregnant. His sick father and his brother Sejdin stay in the enclave.

This 50 -year -old woman tells, in her house in Zivinice:

She has lived in Sweden since 1998, and she returned to Bosnia to attend her father’s funeral. He will be “the fiftieth member of the family” who will be buried there, notably with his five uncles and their five sons, she adds. His brother Sejdin, who was 22 years old in 1995, was buried there in 2003.

“One bone to bury”

“I was able to endure everything but it’s the worst time. We will bury a single bone. I cannot describe this pain, “says Mirzeta Karic, whose son, born shortly after the war, bears his father’s first name. Only his father’s lower jaw was found In a so -called “secondary” common pit, to which corpses were moved months after the massacre.

During these operations aimed at hiding the severity of crimes, many corpses were “shredded” by heavy machines, according to experts. To date, about 7000 of the people killed have been found but often just a few bones are identified by DNA tests.

Only a jaw will also be deposited in the coffin of Hasib Omerovic, another victim who must be buried on Friday. Mevlida Omerovic, 55, Hasib’s wife, died at 33:

He and his brother were detained together and probably killed on one of the five main places of mass execution in the Srebrenica region, she says. The family separated on July 11, 1995. Mevlida left with their nine -year -old daughter and their six -year -old son towards the UN base.

Hasib and Mevlida said they goodbye in the street. “He just said to me:” Keep our children well. ” These are his last words. She remembers crying in her house in Srebrenik. She adds, sobbing:

“A beautiful soul”

Hasib’s sister will not come to her burial. She died a week before. “Her three sons were killed, her husband, her two brothers. She lost all her men. His heart could no longer hold “tells Mevlida Omerovic, who always hopes to find the remains of his brother Senad, killed at 17 in the woods around Srebrenica, one day.

The photo of her brother in one hand, that of her husband in the other, this woman willingly remembers her life before the conflict, briefly making appear a glow to the bottom of her blue eyes. With Hasib, she had just built a house. He worked in a bauxite mine where he maintained the machines, she in a grocery store in the village.

She underlines: