SKELETAL REMAINS OF 1000 GENOCIDE VICTIMS UNEARTHED IN EASTERN BOSNIA

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (December 3,2008) - Bosnian forensic experts said yesterday they have unearthed about 1,000 skeletal remains of genocide victims in a mass grave in the eastern Bosnian village of Kamenica.

Documents recovered from the grave in this village dubbed "Death Valley" showed the victims were from Srebrenica, Bosnian forensic experts said.

The genocidal Serbian fascist aggressor overran the then U.N.-protected eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia, mass murdering some 10,000 Bosnian civilians in Europe’s single worst atrocity since World War II.

The genocide victims were initially buried in a dozen mass graves. But after the release of satellite pictures showing large portions of freshly disturbed ground, the genocidal Serbian fascist aggressor moved them to other locations in order to cover up the crimes.

The body parts of the genocide victims were separated during reburial using bulldozers, and forensic experts have sometimes found parts of a single person buried in three different so-called secondary graves.

"Almost 90 percent of all remains had traces of bullet shots and some victims were blindfolded with rope-tied hands," said Vedo Tuco, standing on the edge of a muddy grave where white-clad forensic pathologists marked and cleaned up bones.

Experts had hoped to complete the exhumations Wednesday but say the work which started two months ago will finish next week.

Tuco said some of the remains were of 14-to-15-year-old boys. The genocide victims were mass murdered at three locations near Srebrenica and transferred to the village of Kamenica from the original graves three months after the execution, he added.

"There is a complete chaos in this mass grave. Some of the remains that we found here will probably be re-associated with the bodies that we had exhumed from other mass graves discovered in this village," Tuco said.

There are 12 mass graves in a strip of land about 7-km (four miles) long, located beside the sole road in this remote and almost deserted village, mainly on Muslim land. Mass graves unearthed earlier yielded around 3,000 body parts of the genocide victims.

"They probably thought that nobody would ever return here and discover the crime," Tuco said. He said another mass grave has been located in the village but digging will likely start in the spring because of bad winter weather.

About 5,800 genocide victims from this part of Bosnia have been identified through DNA analysis but they can be reburied only after 70 percent of the bodily remains have been identified.

"The identification of the bodies we found here will probably take a long time because they are so dismembered and in bad shape," Tuco said.
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