Brutal Memories: One Man’s Life in Detention in Wartime Bosnia

When the first barricades went up in Sarajevo at the start of the Bosnian war in 1992, some of the Bosniaks living in Kucice, a village near the town of Hadzici, not far from the capital, fled their homes in fear.

Almin Djelilovic's family was among the ones that stayed - until May 13, 1992, when local Serbs separated the men from the women, and began to take the men away from the village at gunpoint.

But then an elderly woman known as Grandma Stevinica intervened. "She stood in front of us and told the people who held us at gunpoint: 'Take these men back home, you are not taking them anywhere,'" Djelilovic recalled.

She then lay down in front of the men to stop them from being seized, until most of them were returned to their homes. Djelilovic later found out that his grandfather had saved one of the woman's relatives during World War II.

But Grandma Stevinica's intervention only managed to preserve the Bosniak men's liberty for a few weeks. The village was surrounded again on June 22, 1992, houses and barns were burned and the locals were taken into captivity in a sports centre in Hadzici.

Djelilovic, who was 21 at the time, was among those who were seized: "When we entered the hall, it was already overcrowded. Around 300 men were already there. Some minors were among them. As for women, only those who had come from our village were in that place, around 20 women with children," he said.

According to Djelilovic, the men were then transported to East Sarajevo that evening by buses. During the journey, they were beaten by armed men. They were eventually brought to the Slavisa Vajner Cica military barracks.

"As we got off the bus, we saw two lines of people waiting for us… we had to pass between them. While we were walking,...

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