MILANOVIĆ: THEY SLAUGHTERED MY MOTHER WHO BELIEVED IN THE GOOD IN PEOPLE

SREBRENICA, JULY 6 /SRNA/ - Ninoslav Milanović, the youngest of the three children of Radivojka Milanović, who was brutally slaughtered by Muslim soldiers in the Srebrenica village of Zalazje on St. Peter's Day 33 years ago, told SRNA that his mother's only sin was that until the end of her life, she did not divide people by name and religion, but rather, as a nurse, selflessly treated all the people of Srebrenica.

Ninoslav was only 13 when he heard in Zlatibor, where his parents had taken him away from the war, that his mother would never return.

"I was at my grandparents', my mother's parents', house. My mother didn't want to go with us; she stayed in Srebrenica, `protected` as a nurse by international military forces /UNPROFOR/. We heard that she had disappeared. Our lives turned into uncertainty, and in 1995 we learned that she had been killed," Milanović said.

He said that according to witnesses, he learned that his mother was taken to Srebrenica from Banja Guber, where she helped anyone who needed help.

"Then they drove her in a truck with the others to Zalazje and slaughtered her there. Her body was dismembered," said Milanović, adding that the family first received information that Rada had been "slaughtered personally by Naser Orić".

The remains of Rada Milanović were found in a landfill in Zalazje in 2012. Her family buried her in the local cemetery in the village of Draglice on her native Zlatibor, where her husband Dragomir, who died 11 years ago, rests next to her, as recorded in the book "Testimony about the Unpunished Crime against Serbs in Podrinje".

"Every July 12th, the day she was killed, we gather here with our families. Our sister from Livno comes, our brother from Požega, and we remember our mother, whom we remember for loving everyone and being loved by them. She was good to Muslims, she treated them, she gave them injections," Milanović said.

TESTIMONY ABOUT MILANOVIĆ'S TORTURE BEFORE SHE WAS KILLED

Nurse Radivojka Rada Milanović was 55 when death tore her from the embrace of her loved ones.

Journalist Kristina Ćirković previously recorded the words of Rada's husband Dragomir, who said that he was told that his wife, after terrible torture, was killed by Zulfo Tursunović from Sućeska, because she allegedly gave the wrong injections to patients.

In the book "Planned Chaos," Ibran Mustafić quoted the words of his cousin who witnessed the crime.

"When I arrived in front of the prison, they took all the prisoners from Zalazje and ordered me to drive them towards Zalazje. When we reached the dump, they ordered me to stop and park the truck. I got away a decent distance away, but when I saw their rampage and when the slaughter began, I turned pale as a sheet. When Zulfo stabbed nurse Rada in the chest with a knife, asking her where her radio station was, I no longer had the courage to watch it. I walked from the dump to Srebrenica, and they later brought the truck, and I continued home to Potočari with the truck. The body was covered in blood," the witness said.

Tursunović was a major in the so-called Army of BiH. He gained the status of a "survivor of genocide" when he survived the military breakthrough from Srebrenica to Tuzla after July 11, 1995. Tursunović died a free man at the age of 79.

Mile Janjić's testimony was also recorded about how Rada, together with him, rescued Ramo Kadrić Hljebara from a dangerous environment, which he himself testified about.

"That woman took me to her apartment where I spent the night and in the morning she drove me to the bakery where I found my truck. She saw me off from the city in my car that I gave her. Then I returned to the village. I heard later that she had been killed. I am still very sad and sorry that I did not have the opportunity to help her and save her because I heard that our people had killed her," Kadrić said in his testimony.

ATTACKS ON ZALAZJE AND SASE DOCUMENTED IN THE "ATLAS ABOUT CRIMES AGAINST SERBS"

The attack by Muslim forces on Zalazje and Sase on St. Peter's Day, July 12, 1992, was just one in a series of attacks on Serb villages in the Drina region in which Serb civilians were brutally killed, and the obligation of the Republic Center for the Investigation of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons is to document these crimes, stated the acting director of the Center Viktor Nuždić.

Nuždić told SRNA that a large number of Serbs captured on July 12 in Zalazje were taken to Srebrenica, then killed, and their bodies were found in 2010.

He stated that one of the captured was Judge Slobodan Ilić. Because of that, the BiH judiciary initiated the trial against the wartime commander of Muslim forces in Srebrenica Naser Orić.

"This process ended with a shameful acquittal for Orić," Nuždić pointed out.

He recalled that, in addition to Naser Orić, the other defendants for the crimes in Zalazje were Izet Arifović, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the first instance and died, Suad Smajlović, who was sentenced to three years, and Amir Salihović, who was acquitted.

This crime, Nuždić emphasized, was preceded by the murder of MP Goran Zekić in an ambush on the road between Srebrenica and Zalazje on June 8, 1992, which was a clear message to the Serbs in Zalazje about what was coming for them.

"The attack on Zalazje followed a month after the murder of Zekić, and nine people were killed at that time. The Army of Republika Srpska managed to repel this attack, and then on St. Peter's Day, a terrible attack by Muslim forces followed," Nuždić pointed out.

Nuždić pointed out that it is the Republic Center's obligation to document all these crimes so that they are not forgotten, given that, according to the opinion of judicial institutions at the BiH level, "they do not deserve justice".

He stated that the Republican Center recorded crimes against Serbs in Zalazje and Sase in the "Atlas of Crimes against Serbs in 1992".

"These are just some of the crimes we have recorded in the Atlas. In our analysis during 1992, we recorded 26 mass executions in Serb villages during the Defense-Patriotic War, a continued practice from World War II.

On that tragic St. Peter's Day, strong Muslim forces from Srebrenica, under the command of the wartime commander in Srebrenica Naser Orić, continued the systematic and planned ethnic cleansing of Serbs in this and the neighboring Bratunac municipality that had begun in April that year.

They raided several Serbian villages, killing, looting, and burning everything they came across.

In addition to the 69 killed on St. Peter's Day in 1992, another 22 Serbs disappeared and were captured, 10 of whom are still missing, and a large number were wounded.

After torture and abuse in the Srebrenica camps, they were all killed, and the remains of 10 of them were accidentally found by a missing persons search team from Tuzla on June 10, 2011, in Zalazje, while searching for Muslim victims.

After more than a year, those remains were identified and buried on St. Peter's Day in 2012, two were found and buried earlier, and another 10 Serbs who went missing that day are still being searched for. /to be continued/