VELIKI PARK MURDER SUSPECTS EVADE COURTS BUT SPEAK TO PRESS

SARAJEVO, NOVEMBER 4 /SRNA/ – Nedžad Herenda and Edvin Jusić, who are wanted on Interpol arrest warrants for their alleged role in the killing of eight Yugoslav People's Army /JNA/ soldiers in Sarajevo's Veliki Park in 1992, remain beyond the reach of the BiH judiciary but have spoken to journalists to give their versions of events.

Herenda, who lives in the Netherlands, and Jusić, who lives in Germany, gave journalists differing accounts of what happened on April 22, 1992, BIRN reported. Herenda said he saw an unknown unit bring eight captured soldiers, their hands tied, into the basement of the Police Headquarters building, and then "heard shooting". Jusić says that in April 1992 he was a police sniper in Sarajevo's Novi Grad municipality and was part of the group that stopped the JNA column, but that he then "ran out of ammunition and went back to the Novi Grad police station". He said he had "tried to help one prisoner", but that Davor Matić ordered the captured soldiers to be shot, and that Čovčić, Matić and Sulejman Babić opened fire. He said he did not see Herenda that day. The eight JNA reservists were captured on April 22, 1992, in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Dobrinja, when their armored personnel carrier broke down on the way to Ilidža. The prisoners were first taken to the Novi Grad police station and then to the Police Headquarters building in central Sarajevo, from where they were taken to Veliki Park and killed. In December 2016, the BiH Prosecutor's Office indicted wartime Special Police Unit commander Dragan Vikić, wartime Assistant Interior Minister Jusuf Pušina, and former reserve police officers Nermin Uzunović and Mladen Čovčić over the killing of the prisoners and the removal of their bodies. The indictment named Herenda and Jusić as the men who opened fire on the soldiers, but they were not charged in it. Interpol red notices were issued for both in 2017. The Netherlands refused to extradite Herenda, saying he could face an unfair trial and inhumane treatment in BiH, while Germany refused to extradite Jusić because he is a German citizen. Vikić, Pušina, Uzunović and Čovčić were acquitted in 2022.