Montenegro Commemorates Family Murdered While Fleeing Bosnia

The commemoration near the town of Pluzine on Thursday. Photo: Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

The three Bosniaks were murdered in the Piva River canyon near Pluzine after escaping from the Serb-held town of Foca in eastern Bosnia.

The killers were members of the Bosnian Serb Army's Dragan Nikolic special unit.

Special State Prosecutor Tanja Colovic Deretic, Pluzine municipality official Ljubica Kulic and representatives of the Bosniak Council and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO laid flowers on the bridge where they were killed.

"We are warning the relevant institutions that those convicted of this war crime have not yet been brought to justice. A memorial day has not yet been established for the war crime committed against the Klapuh family, nor has the place of suffering been marked and a monument has not yet been erected," Vaskrsija Klacar from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights told media.

In 1996, the Higher Court in Podgorica sentenced Bosnian Serb Army soldiers Zoran Vukovic, Janko Janjic, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Simovic to 20 years in jail each in absentia for the murders. They have never served their sentences.

In a separate case in 2001, the Hague Tribunal also sentenced Vukovic to 12 years' imprisonment for war crimes in the town of Foca. He was granted early release in 2008.

In 2015, Vukovic was arrested in Serbia on a Montenegrin warrant but was soon released from custody. In 2016, the Higher Court in Belgrade called for his extradition to Montenegro but the Serbian Justice Ministry has not yet initiated the process.

Montenegro's Justice Ministry called for Vukovic's extradition again in September 2018 and July 2020, but received no response from Serbia.

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