Bereaved Sarajevo parents await Mladic verdict

By Dejan Maksimovic

BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) - Families of children killed during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995 are expecting justice from former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic's war crimes trial on Wednesday.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is preparing to pass its final verdict on Mladic, also known as the Butcher of Bosnia.

Mladic faces charges of genocide, including the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, plus the targeting of civilians during his forces’ three-year siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

Fikret Grabovica, the president of an association of parents whose children were killed during the siege, spoke to Anadolu Agency.

He is among the many parents who lost children during the repeated shelling of the Bosnian capital; his daughter was only 11 when she was killed in a mortar attack by Bosnian Serb forces.

Irma died of shrapnel injuries when a mortar round exploded near a group of children on a Sarajevo street.

"It is very difficult to describe the pain I felt the day I lost my daughter. Losing your most loved one is the greatest pain that you will ever experience.

“There is no medicine for that, but there are some ointments that will relieve pain," said Grabovic, referring to the Mladic case.

Grabovic said although more than 24 years had passed since Irma was killed, coping became harder and harder for him:

"They say time heals everything, but it is not completely true. As the time passes, it becomes more and more difficult for parents, because we are aware that our children today would have been adults, they would have had families, we would have grandchildren."

He emphasizes that these parents are especially hurt by the knowledge that no one else was found responsible for the killing of their children.

Grabovic said in his opinion Mladic was responsible for the deaths in Sarajevo, without a doubt: "I want Mladic to be convicted and punished from every substance in the indictment."

A similar tragedy during the siege was experienced by Barbara Jurenic, who lost a 10-year-old son, Danijel.

On Jan. 22, 1994 Danijel and his sister Ivana went out to play in the snow just like other children in the neighborhood.

Ivana eventually went home to change her wet clothes. However, Jurenic did not let her go back outside. She was about to call Danijel home too but then she heard gunshots. She ran outside right away, but Danijel and some other children were lying dead on the ground.

On the same day, another five children were killed in the shelling.

Jurenic says the tragic event took place only a hundred meters from their apartment; her memory does not fade and the sorrow is growing.

"Never will I forget those memories. It was something terrible, a horror ... And what's worse, every day I experience it.

“I cannot live and grieve. I have a daughter and a little grandchild, so she gives me the strength to live to fight further. It is terrible what happened, as many of our children disappeared and suffered in the war," said Jurenic.

She said she has been suffering the pain of losing her son every day for 23 years.

"It is very difficult to look at my son's coevals, to see their growth, seeing them having a family … sometimes I am looking for my son among the children playing on the street, but I cannot find him," said Jurenic.

When it comes to Ratko Mladic's verdict, Jurenic said that, regardless of the eventual punishment, her son will not come back.

"Even if [Mladic] comes and says 'I killed him', what does it have to do with me?

“My son is not alive. How can [Mladic’s] conscience struggle with all this? I doubt that such people have a conscience at all. If he had conscience, he would not have done such a thing," she said.

Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb military commander, is charged with 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity plus violation of the laws and customs of war.

A special part of the indictment relates to the siege of Sarajevo, the shelling of the city and sniper fire on its civilian population.

Mladic is charged with ordering the shelling of residential streets and buildings, civilian institutions and hospitals.

Over 11,000 people were killed or wounded during the siege, including a large number of children and women.

During the siege, which lasted 1,425 days, an average of 329 shells fell every day and at least 50,000 people were injured, according to the Union of Civilian Victims of the War of Sarajevo Canton.

The reading of the Mladic judgment will take place on Wednesday in The Hague.

His trial began on May 16, 2012. The indictment against Mladic was filed in 1995 but he hid himself for several years, avoiding extradition.

He was arrested in Serbia in 2011 after 15 years in hiding.

*Talha Ozturk contributed to this story from Belgrade