Bodies exhumed from mass graves

CLOSE to 100 bodies of Bosnian Muslims, most of them in black plastic bags of the former Yugoslav army, have been exhumed from several mass graves in Bosnia.

The bodies were found in an old Muslim graveyard in the eastern town of Zvornik.

“We have found 97 bodies in six mass and two individual graves and all but 15 of them were in the bags,” forensic expert Eva Klonowski, member of an expert team of Bosnia’s Commission for Missing Persons said.

Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, currently on trial at the UN war crimes court, fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and several other senior Serb officials have been indicted for war crimes in Zvornik.

But no local commanders or officials have been charged by The Hague-based tribunal for the “ethnic cleansing” of Zvornik, which had a majority Muslim population before the 1992-5 war.

Some Bosnian officials said the exhumation work at the graveyard was requested by the UN court but did not know if it was related to on-going trials or new charges.

A strong smell spread over one of the graves as UN investigators and Bosnian officials opened bags containing 32 bodies there.

The corpses had turned a pale yellow-reddish colour.

Polish-born Klonowski said some bodies had bullet holes in their heads and others were broken with rifle butts or other hard objects.

“The bodies are well preserved and most of them were naked. Some are more solid and others are in a so-called liquefying state of saponification,” she said, referring to the process in which tissue and muscle melt together.

Murat Hurtic, head of the expert team, said the victims were Muslims from Zvornik but also those who fled to Bosnia from neighbouring Serbia.

“They were caught at random in their houses and in streets and executed.”

Hurtic said units of the former Yugoslav army, as well as paramilitary units of the Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic took part in the killings.