213 BODIES OF VICTIMS FOUND AT THE MASS GRAVE SITE IN TOMAŠICA IDENTIFIED SO FAR. IDENTIFICATION OF THE VICTIMS TO BE COMPLETED IN EARLY JULY

As part of the activities on exhumation and identification of victims from the Tomašica mass grave site near Prijedor, which are being carried out under the supervision of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 213 victims have been identified to date, whose complete mortal remains have been found in this mass grave.    

Identification of all the complete mortal remains is expected to be finished by the end of this month; namely, 275 complete bodies of victims will be identified and buried in a dignified manner at a collective funeral, on 20 July 2014. Also, around twenty (20) incomplete mortal remains, for which burial the families gave their consent, are planned to be buried together with these victims.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has insisted on the process of identification to be carried out in as expedient a manner as possible, all in accordance with the resources available, because finding and identifying mortal remains are very important for the families of victims who have been searching for their dearest ones for more than twenty (20) years. 

Outstanding efforts invested by all the persons involved in this process resulted in identification of mortal remains of more than 200 victims in as little as four (4) months, and in the fact that the remaining complete mortal remains, as well as some of the incomplete remains, will be identified in less than a month.   

275 complete and 120 incomplete mortal remains of the victims from the past war have been found at the Tomašica mass grave site near Prijedor, which puts this mass grave site among the few biggest mass grave sites uncovered in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The victims are Bosniaks and Croats killed in Prijedor, in the spring and summer of 1992.

An Investigator of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a Prosecutor from the Special Department for War Crimes have been involved as supervisors in this process of exhumation and identification from its very beginning. Since the start of the process, the Investigator of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has spent more than 130 working days at the sites of Tomašica and Krajina Identification Project (KIP) of Šejkovača, in all weather conditions. 

In the past period, the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has increased the number of Prosecutors and supporting staff working on war crimes cases in the territory of Prijedor, for the purpose of as efficient conducting of investigations as possible and in order to prosecute war crimes suspects whose victims were buried in Tomašica.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has repeatedly called upon the institutions of power in our country, as well as the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international community to render assistance in strengthening capacities and expediting exhumations and identification of victims. Moreover, we have repeatedly urged to have the conditions for storing mortal remains in the KIP Šejkovača improved, because the process of finding and identifying missing persons represents an important segment in gathering evidentiary material in war crimes cases, which directly influences the speed with which war crimes cases could be prosecuted.