“During
four years of the Institute’s existence, only 165 Serbs have been
identified, which means that at this pace, the Republic of Srpska could
find and identify 1,680 missing soldiers and civilians in the next 40
years,” Mitrović told reporters Monday in Banja Luka following a meeting
of the Committee of the Families of Detained Veterans and Missing
Civilians of Srpska.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet created a central database of
missing persons, which would help the searchers clearly know who they
are looking for, even though this should have been done back in 2008,
Mitrović said.
According to Mitrović, the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia frivolously determined that 8,000 Bosniaks had gone
missing in Srebrenica, and now there is completely opposite information
coming from the defence lawyers of the Serbs tried by the Tribunal, who
say that the figure is incorrect.
“Families of the fallen from the Republic of Srpska have nothing
against defining the actual number of persons gone missing in
Srebrenica, no matter who they may be, and want the process sped up.
”Families of the RS fallen demand that the BiH Missing Persons
Institute be reformed, meaning that the Council of Ministers take over
the role of the Institute’s founder from the International Commission on
Missing Persons (ICMP).
”That means that the Institute be brought back within the bounds of
law and not be subjected to any political influence; it should instead
work impartially on the search process,” Mitrović said.
He finds it unacceptable that after the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH
received information 2010 on the presence of a Serb mass grave in Adil
Bešlić barracks in Bihać, it took it a whole year to finally issue an
exhumation order.
”Families of the RS fallen will persist with their demands to
uncover the details of the latest scandal, namely the fact that more
than BAM 600,000, the amount that was planned for accelerating the
search process, has been sitting on the ICMP account for 10 years,
instead of being allocated to the BiH Missing Persons Institute.
”Families of the RS missing have requested the ICMP and BiH Missing
Persons Institute to provide full information on this case,” Mitrović
said.
Other attendees of the Committee meeting were Goran Krčmar, head of
the RS Operational Team in charge of tracing the missing, Milutin Mišić,
member of the Council of Directors of the BiH Missing Persons
Institute, and Milorad Kojić, Acting Director of the RS Centre for War
and War Crimes Research and Tracing the Missing.
(Srna/Frontal)
