‘Clean-Up Operation’: Looking for Bosnian Massacre Suspects, 30 Years On

On the basis of documents and witness testimonies, BIRN has identified three potential suspects who have never been charged - Sanica police chief Milan Tomic, his deputy commander, Petar Mihic, and Bosnian Serb Army Sanica Battalion commander Jovan Kevac.

So far, domestic courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina have only convicted one person of the Biljani killings, while two others have been acquitted and one suspect died after he was indicted.

BIRN's analysis of evidence used at the trials of Bosnian Serb military and political leaders in The Hague reveals that witnesses also mentioned at least ten other possible perpetrators who they saw in Biljani on July 10, 1992, none of whom have ever been indicted.

Magbula Mesanovic says she invested a lot of effort in helping prosecutors trace those responsible for the death of her 21-year-old son Admir, who was a student at the electrical engineering faculty at Sarajevo University, and husband Hajrudin, a teacher at a local elementary school in Biljani. She saw them for the last time in the morning of July 10, 1992, when soldiers banged on the door of their family house in the hamlet of Mesanovici near Biljani.

According to Mesanovic, men whose surnames she said were Kovacevic and Lakic and a young man they called 'Dragan Rosin', who was her son's age, arrived at their house in the early morning, while three men went to each of the other houses in the hamlet.

"I stood up, opened the window, saw the guys. They said: 'Men out'," she recalled, adding that her husband went out quickly, while her son was looking for his boots as he thought he would be detained in a prison camp. "And the way he looked at me, I can never erase it from my memory," she said.

Shortly afterwards, shooting started...