TOMORROW MARKS 30 YEARS SINCE THE EXECUTION OF NINE SERB SOLDIERS ON MEDENO BRDO

BELGRADE, JULY 25 /SRNA/ – Tomorrow will mark 30 years since the execution of nine members of the Serb Army of Krajina who were captured by members of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and the Croatian Army in the area of Medeno Brdo on Mount Dinara, and no one has yet been held accountable for this crime, the Veritas Documentation and Information Center announced.

Radio operators of the Serb Army of Krajina recorded the enemy's communication during the capture of their comrades on July 26, 1995, confirming that all of them had been taken alive. Immediately after this crime, the Croatian Operation Storm was launched, and the fate of six out of the nine killed remained unknown until 1998. At that time, through the Commission for Missing Persons of Herzeg Bosnia, news arrived that hunters had noticed a pile of bones in a sinkhole on Medeno Brdo on Mount Dinara, thanks to the fact that the area had been burned in the meantime. Commissions for Missing Persons of Republika Srpska and Herzeg Bosnia carried out a terrain inspection, after which, on November 16, 1998, with the help of a SFOR helicopter, the bones were extracted from the sinkhole and transferred to Banja Luka. Six skeletons were recovered, while the remains of three soldiers from this group had been exhumed in April 1996 from a mass grave in Kamen near Glamoč. Among the bones exhumed from the sinkhole on Medeno Brdo, the identified remains belonged to Zdravko Vujko, Milenko Radišić from Velika Glava, Damir Manojlović from Ivoševci, Milan Macura from Kistanje, and brothers Ljubomir and Milorad Urukal from Bratiškovci. From the mass grave in Kamen near Glamoč, the remains of Marinko and Vinko Kovačević from Ervenik and Željko Eraković from Bratiškovci were identified. Although the bones had been charred, evidence was found that identified the group. At that time, DNA identification was not yet performed in Republika Srpska, and by classic methods the bones could not be completely separated and individually identified, so the families decided to bury them together at the Perduovo Cemetery in Banja Luka, where a joint monument was erected in their honor. The location where their remains were found, injuries on the bones, and traces on their clothes, footwear, and equipment indisputably indicate that they were executed after capture and thrown into the sinkhole, a mass grave, with the intention of covering up the crime. Although their killers violated all laws and customs of war, making them unquestionably war criminals of the highest order, no one has yet been held accountable for this crime before domestic or international courts, Veritas stated.