IVANOVIĆ: HALF OF THE CAPTURED MEN SUCCUMBED TO TORTURE IN THE SREBRENICA CAMPS

SREBRENICA, JULY 3 /SRNA/ - Former camp inmate, Ilija Ivanović from the village of Ćosići, who was wounded in an attack by Muslim forces on this day in 1993 and then captured, said that he survived the terrible torture in the Srebrenica camps in which half of the 30 captured Serbs from Skelani and the surrounding area died.

"I drank more urine than I ate food while I was in the camp... I survived, and half of the 30 prisoners did not. No one was held accountable for that torture and crime. This shows what the BiH judiciary is like and that such a court is not needed if it is going to protect criminals from one nation," said Ivanović.

According to him, the judiciary is "a mirror" of BiH, and a country with such an attitude towards its citizens should not exist.

Ivanović recalled that Naser Orić's units attacked his village at around 6:00 a.m.

"It was still night. They were raiding Serb houses, killing and burning. 12 locals were killed, and they captured me, wounded," Ivanovic recalled.

The president of the Organization of Families of Captured and Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians of Srebrenica Branimir Kojić said that the killings of Serbian civilians - children, women and the elderly - in Skelani and surrounding villages on January 16, 1993 show that Muslim forces had a clear genocidal intent to destroy everything Serbian.

"The attacks on Kravica, on Christmas Day, January 7, and on Skelani, on January 16, 1993, were planned and the goal of the Muslim authorities in Srebrenica was the complete persecution and destruction of everything Serbian. In those two days, 118 Serbs were killed and 245 wounded. Two-thirds were civilians and no one has been prosecuted for these crimes to this day. The Hague and the Court of BiH do not give sentences for the murders of Serb children and women. I guess that is normal according to their criteria and the understanding of the international community, because they have been silent for almost 30 years and have done nothing to punish the criminals," Kojić pointed out.

According to him, Serbs are being targeted wherever representatives of the socalled international community, or the West, are involved.

The book "Testimony about the Unpunished Crime against Serbs in Podrinje" quoted him as saying that all bridges in the world symbolize life and connect people, but that the bridge over the Drina River between Skelani and Bajina Bašta on January 16, 1993 was a bridge of death, because Muslim attackers held it under sniper and machine gun fire, killing civilians who tried to escape by fleeing to neighboring Serbia.

"Among others, they killed Gordana Sekulić on the bridge, who was carrying her four-year-old son Đorđe in her arms, who fortunately survived. That day, four children and 15 women were killed, and the underage Dimitrijević brothers were killed. Aleksandar was only four years old," said Kojić.

He stressed that the attitude and obstruction of the BiH judiciary towards Serb victims and the open delay in filing indictments against the perpetrators of the mass murders of Serb civilians in Podrinje are condemnable.

Kojić stated that Serbs will never give up on justice and the truth about the war events in these areas during the Defense-Patriotic War and will never accept the narrative according to which foreigners and Bosniak political leaders want to write a false history of BiH.

In the mid-January each year, at the Central Monument to Serbian Civilians and Soldiers in Skelani near Srebrenica, a memorial service is held for 305 Serbs who died in the war, 69 of whom were killed on this day in 1993. More than half of those killed were civilians - women, children and the elderly.

The attack at dawn on the Serbian villages of Kušići, Ćosići, Kalimanići, and then on Skelani was carried out by a synchronized, strong Muslim force from Srebrenica with several thousand soldiers under the command of Naser Orić. They killed, looted and burned everything Serbian.

In total, 69 residents of this area were killed in the attack, and 165 were wounded. Of the 30 captured, half did not survive the torture in the Srebrenica casemates, and four of them are still missing. /to be continued/