GRABOVAC: GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST SERB CIVILIANS IN SIJEKOVAC

BROD, NOVEMBER 9 /SRNA/ – Marko Grabovac, president of the Brod Organization for Serching for Killed Soldiers and Missing Civilians, said genocide was committed against Serb civilians in Sijekovac near Brod in 1992, including the Zečević family. Three decades later, no one has yet answered for it before domestic or international courts.

"Those who ordered and carried out the genocide in Sijekovac are known. Our team has compiled an expert report on the genocide against Serb civilians in the former municipality of Bosanski Brod in 1992," Grabovac told SRNA.

Grabovac said the report contained evidence of mass Serb graves, the bodies of murdered Serbs and Roma, Serb women who had been raped, the torture of Serb detainees, and the burning of Serb property and villages. It also included signs that had hung on buildings used by Croat-Muslim forces in the Brod area.

"Members of the Croatian Army and the HVO operated in the Brod and Derventa area together with Muslim forces. They left behind several mass Serb graves and seven camps and prisons through which several hundred Serb detainees passed," Grabovac said.

He noted that the first crimes against Serbs were committed in the Brod area, where the first camps for Serbs were set up. He said the burning and looting of Serb property had been carried out under the command of the Croatian Army, which at the time had committed aggression against BiH.

"The criminal complaint we submitted in 2001 to the Hague Tribunal, the BiH Prosecutor's Office and the Croatian judiciary covers, in addition to Nijaz Čaušević, known as Medo, from Slavonski Brod, a large number of those who ordered and committed war crimes against Serbs in the Brod area," Grabovac said.

Speaking about the late heroine Milja Zečević, whose three sons and husband were killed before her eyes in Sijekovac near Brod in March 1992, Grabovac said this brave woman had, despite everything, testified about the suffering of her family members and neighbors.

"Despite the terrible tragedy that befell her family, Zečević found the strength and courage to testify for years about the genocide committed against Serb civilians in Sijekovac and Brod and to seek justice for the Serb victims," Grabovac said.

Milja Zečević will be buried today at 1 p.m. in Gornji Smrtići near Prnjavor, where the remains of her sons and husband are buried. Her fourth son, who survived the massacre in Sijekovac, is also buried there.

Brod has declared a day of mourning to mark the death of Milja Zečević, a heroic mother.

Milja Zečević died on Saturday, November 7, aged 94. She died in the yard of her house, on the very spot where members of the HVO, the Croatian Army and paramilitary units had killed her sons and husband.

In earlier testimony to the Republika Srpska Memorial Center, Milja Zečević said a group of men with stockings over their faces had burst into her yard on March 26, 1992.

"The attackers beat my husband and three sons one after another and finally executed them," she said at the time.

She testified that she had watched her eldest son being killed by the water fountain, her middle son at the gate and her youngest in the yard. She believed the killers were their neighbors because they wore stockings over their faces.

"They beat them one by one, questioned them and then beat them again. I was there. After they killed them, they drove me away down the road, and I went all the way to Smrtići," she said.

Milja Zečević had been awarded the Order of Miloš Obilić.