TWO SERBS SENTENCED FOR VLASENICA WAR CRIMES

TWO SERB WAR CRIMINALS GET 40 YEARS FOR VLASENICA WAR CRIMES, BUT NO JUSTICE YET FOR THE 1992 ZAKLOPACA MASSACRE

PHOTO: Remains of innocent Zaklopaca Massacre victims - women, children, and the elderly in a Zaklopaca mass grave. To this day, no perpetrators have ever answered charges for this ghastly crime. Courtesy: Zaklopaca.net.

Pre-war Vlasenica was a neighbouring Bosniak municipality bordering with Srebrenica. Today, it's split into two municipalities - new one being called Milici. It's a place of ghastly crimes against the Bosniak women and children, known as the Zaklopaca Massacre, that occurred three years before the Srebrenica Genocide. Before the war, Zaklopaca was a beautiful Bosniak village around Srebrenica, located in the Vlasenica municipality. Today, there are no Bosniak people who permanently live there. Serbs who participated in the carnage of Bosniak civilians in Zaklopaca are still roaming free. Not even one Bosnian Serb war criminal has ever answered charges for the Zaklopaca Massacre.

In a small, but encouraging sign of relief, the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina Friday convicted Predrag Bastah and Goran Višković of crimes against humanity in Vlasenica, sentencing them to 22 and 18 years of prison.

The trial chamber confirmed that the two, Bastah serving as a police reservist at the public security station in Vlasenica, and Višković as a member of the Republic of Srpska army, were guilty of nine points in their indictments. The verdict stated that they participated in “illegal imprisonments and forceful relocations,” as well as the murders of three civilians. Višković was also found guilty of raping three Bosniak girls. The two were already found guilty in 1992 of imprisoning a man who remains missing since then. According to the witness accounts, both were also involved in raping underage girls. Witnesses described the two as “a source of fear for the Muslim population of Vlasenica,” calling the vehicles that they drove “vehicles of death.”

Upon the pronouncement of the verdict, relatives of the victims left the courtroom in disappointment due to weak sentences given to the two. The elderly Ferida Hadžić-Aganović was the only one to remain in the courtroom. She yelled at convicted Serbian war criminals to return her sons, Mehmed and Muhamed Hadžić, home.