Bosnia opens memorial center in honor of 1995 victims

By Talha Ozturk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - Bosnia and Herzegovina's northern city of Tuzla on Friday opened a memorial center called Kapija (the Gate) in honor of all victims killed on the site in May 1995.

The Kapija Memorial Center from Saturday will be expecting its visitors to see an exhibition about the massacre of civilians committed by Serb forces on May 25, 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces fired a missile at the Kapija neighborhood on May 25, 1995. The attack killed 71 and wounded more than 200 civilians.

Tuzla Mayor Jasmin Imamovic said that regardless of all relevant facts and evidence, and despite the court decisions convicting those charged with this crime to 20 years in prison, some still deny it ever happened.

“That's why we want to use the truth to defend from lies, to keep the eternal memory of the war crime victims and not allow the criminals to lie. Truth is stronger than lies provided that it is contained in a memorial and monumental culture. This center is the keeper of the evidence about the crime at the gate. The evidence will be available not only to visitors but also online,” said Imamovic.

A commemorative commemoration for the victims of the 25th anniversary of the Kapija massacre will be held in Tuzla on Monday.

On May 25, 1995, Novak Djukic, a commander of the Ozren Tactical Group of the Army of the Republika Srpska, ordered an artillery platoon to shell the city of Tuzla with cannons.

The Bosnian state court in 2010 sentenced Djukic to 25 years in prison for ordering the shelling which, according to the indictment, killed 71 and injured at least 140 civilians.

The sentence was reduced in February 2014 to 20 years in prison after Bosnia's Constitutional Court established a wrong application of the law in Djukic's case.

Djukic then departed to Serbia for, as his attorney said, medical treatment and has been unavailable to Bosnia's judicial institutions since then.