WITNESS: FATHER’S MORTAL REMAINS FIT INTO A SMALL SHOE BOX

SARAJEVO, FEBRUARY 12 /SRNA/ - At a trial of the former commander of the Fifth Corps of the so-called Army of BiH, Atif Dudaković, and other members of this Corps for crimes against Serbian soldiers and civilians in several Krajina municipalities in 1995, the witness for the prosecution Milenko Ćirić said that his father's burnt remains, which were found in a house, fit into a small shoe box.

Ćirić, who lived in Ključ with his father Zoran, his wife, and two children until September 1995, said that during the war, he was engaged in the military and that he was not with his family on September 15, but he evacuated them to the vicinity of Prijedor even before that time, reports Birn. "My wife and children were evacuated to Prijedor. The father was in the house in Ljubine, he occasionally went there," the witness said, adding that it was a village with a majority Serbian population with no more than 75 houses. When he heard about the shelling of Ključ, Ćirić recalled that he set off on foot for Sanski Most and asked passers-by about his father. "My cousin told me that he begged him to go with them, and he replied, `Nikola, I'm not going anywhere, no one will hurt me, I participated in the past war, I fought for these people,'" the witness recalled the conversation with his cousin. Ćirić says that when he arrived in Ključ in 1997, he had no information about his father and that his sister asked the International Commission on Missing Persons to check the house in Ljubine that had been burned. "They were digging through the ruins and that black burnt layer appeared. We found only 250 grams of bones, they fit into a shoe box," said Čirić. The former commander and members of the Fifth Corps of the so-called Army of BiH - Atif Dudaković, Sanel Šabić, Ibrahim Šiljedić, Safet Salihagić, Adis Zjakić, Redžep Zlojić, Samir Solaković, Fatmir Muratović, Muharem Alešević, Husein Balagić, Edin Domazet, Ejub Koženjić, Ibrahim Nadarević and Said Mujić are on trial for crimes committed in the area of Bosanski Petrovac, Ključ, Bosanska Krupa and Sanski Most, including the killing of more than 300 people, persecutions and destruction of religious buildings.