TOMORROW MARKS 34 YEARS SINCE BRUTAL AND UNPUNISHED CRIME AGAINST SERBS IN GORNJI GRAHOVLJANI

BELGRADE, DECEMBER 28 /SRNA/ – Tomorrow marks 34 years since the murder of 18 Serb civilians, including six women, from the village of Gornji Grahovljani near Pakrac, whose bodies have not been found to this day, the Veritas Documentation - Information Centre announced.

Croatian “Zenge” units entered Gornji Grahovljani in the early morning of December 29, 1991, surrounded the village and rounded up 18 residents who happened to be there, and led them to the nearby forest with curses and hitting with gunstocks.

There they crucified them, nailed them through their arms and legs to tree trunks, and finally liquidated them with firearms.

Those killed were: Branko Arsenić /58/, Jevrosima Barjaktar /79/, Bosiljka Bosanac /60/, Jovo Bosanac /36/, Bojana Jovanović /58/, Dragica Komlenac /53/, Jovo Komlenac /64/, Radovan Komlenac /21/, Zdravko Komlenac /44/, Milan Končar /29/, Branko Marić /53/, Pavle Marić /73/, Stanko Marković /63/, Ana Pavić /62/, Dušan Vidić /57/, Boro Vujanić /52/, Stoja Vujčić /65/, and Blagoja Žarković /78/.

The murder of Radovan and Dragica Komlenac and Jevrosima Barjaktar was watched by a fifteen-year-old boy, Slobodan Vidić, hidden behind a tree, who could neither run nor speak because of fear. He was the grandson of the liquidated Dušan Vidić.

The killers took Slobodan to the barracks in Slavonska Požega, from where he was rescued after several months by a policeman from Pakrac, Ivo Pedić, whose wife Radmila was a Serb and a close relative of the boy.

Neighbours threatened Pedić that they would throw a hand grenade at his house because he was guarding a "Chetnik brat", which is why they returned the boy to the Požega barracks after half a year, where he was found in 1993 by a member of the civilian police of UNPROFOR, Canadian Captain D.B. Nicholson.

Nicholson took the boy to the Serb side, who then told how the villagers were liquidated. Then they went around the crime scene and found nails and bullet marks on tree trunks, but no remains.

Convinced that Slobodan was telling the truth, Nicholson spent the next few months intensively searching for the remains of the Gornji Grahovljani Serbs.

One lead pointed to the forest where the killings occurred, and another toward fishponds in Marino Selo near Pakračka Poljana, the site of one of the most notorious wartime detention camps of the 1990s.

Due to obstruction and threats, the burial sites were not located.

Nicholson was soon forced to leave UNPROFOR and return to Canada. From there, he later sent extensive documentation on the crimes in Gornji Grahovljani to Serbs in Okučani, noting that he had also submitted the same material to his command.

Despite this, the remains of the victims from Grahovljani have never been found.

The witness, Slobodan Vidić, was killed in 1994 on the Bihać front, leaving no surviving eyewitness to the crime, for which no one has been held accountable before either local or international courts.

According to the 1991 census, Gornji Grahovljani had 136 inhabitants, all of Serb nationality.

In Donji Grahovljani, out of 188 inhabitants, there were 155 Serbs, 22 Croats, five Yugoslavs, and six others, while Srednji Grahovljani had 43 inhabitants - 36 Serbs and seven Yugoslavs.

According to the 2021 census, nine residents lived in Gornji Grahovljani and 18 in Donji Grahovljani, without declared nationality, while Srednji Grahovljani had no residents, Veritas stated.