KILLED ON THEIR DOORSTEPS IN SKELANI, BiH JUDICIARY HAS NOT PROCESSED ANYONE YET

BANJA LUKA, JANUARY 16 /SRNA/ - Skelani people were killed on their doorsteps, massacred, abused, but the judicial institutions of BiH have not found it necessary to charge anyone for these crimes, Acting Director of the Republika Srpska Research Centre of War, War Crimes and Tracing Missing Persons Viktor Nuždić told SRNA.

Nuždić said that not less than 14 women and two children were killed in Skelani, the old people were killed, people were captured and taken away; even 32 years later no one was held accountable for the death of 69 persons killed today in 1993. According to him, the attack on Skelani was being prepared for a long time. Crossing the Drina River was the only way out for the Serbs, but the Muslim forces were setting up ambushes and killing Serb civilians who wanted to save their lives and the lives of their families. "Criminals did not spare the children, as was the case with the Dimitrijević brothers, whose life was taken by the executioners at the moment when they tried to save themselves," Nuždić pointed out. He said that Podrinje was ethnically cleansed from Serbs in 1992 and at the beginning of 1993 in all areas where there was no resistance organised. "In the `Atlas of Crimes against Serbs` of the Republic Research Centre, in 1992 alone, there were 28 Serb villages recorded in which four or more people were killed, while all the villages were completely destroyed, burned, and everything living found in them was killed," Nuždić pointed out. He recalled that Muslim forces continued the same practice at the beginning of 1993 when they committed crimes in Kravica on Christmas Day, and then in Skelani on January 16 of the same year. Only with the formation of the Republika Srpska Army, Nuždić emphasized, did the Serbs get protection from suffering the fate of their ancestors in World War II. "Judicial institutions at the BiH level have not found it appropriate to charge anyone for these crimes to date. It seems it was not enough to pass at least one conviction for these crimes, while the Hague Tribunal acquitted Naser Orić," said Nuždić. At the Central Memorial dedicated to 305 Serb civilians and soldiers killed in Skelani near Srebrenica, a memorial service will be held today to honour the murdered Serbs of this place and neighbouring villages, 69 of whom were killed died on that date 32 years ago in an attack committed by Muslim forces. Continuing the ethnic cleansing of central Podrinje and the destruction of everything with Serb-prefix, which began in April 1992, strong Muslim forces of several thousand soldiers from Srebrenica, under the command of Naser Orić, attacked the Serb villages around Skelani at dawn on January 16, 1993. Two thirds of the victims were civilians, including several children. 165 locals were wounded. Half out of 30 prisoners of war did not survive the torture in the Srebrenica prisons, four of whom are still missing. Residents sought salvation by retreating towards the border bridge towards Bajina Bašta in Serbia, while some tried to save their lives by swimming across the Drina.