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In a Grisly, Summer Harvest, Nova Kasaba Gives Up its Dead
‘It is still too early to say just how many will be
By Peter Greste
"We have exhumed seven bodies all dressed in civilian clothing, all with their hands wired behind their backs," chief investigator William Haglund told reporters. Haglund heads a team of forensic pathologists, anthropologists and archealogists sent by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague to gather evidence related to the fall of the Srebrenica enclave last July.
Aided by locally-hired Serb workers, investigators later began digging test trenches across a third pit to determine its dimensions but did not begin full-scale exhumation.
Haglund said his team's work was based in part on U.S. satellite photographs. "The satellite photos show four areas of disturbance. We think three of them mark the places where bodies were covered, while the fourth was a makeshift path for a bulldozer," he said. Although Haglund refused to speculate on how many corpses may be buried there, a human knee-joint protruded from uneven ground to one side of the meadow.
The investigators have already emptied one mass grave of at least 154 bodies from a site by a remote dirt road at Cerska, not far from Nova Kasaba -- all dressed in civilian clothes, and many with their hands bound behind their backs. "It is still too early to say just how many will be in the other graves. Last time at Cerska, our initial expectations were off by about 300 percent."
According to Serbs living in Nova Kasaba, it is the West which has twisted the facts. "There are bodies there," acknowledged one local resident who declined to be named. "We plough them up all the time, but they are all of Serbs who the Turks (Muslims) killed. Why is it that the world blames us Serbs, when everyone was involved in a war?"
Theo, a Serb leading the team of local labourers hired to help Haglund, agreed. "Why is it that no one says anything when the bodies of Serbs are found?" asked the former Bosnian Serb army officer, who asked not to be named. "When they find one or five or 10 Muslims, everyone acts as if it is thousands. I hate this job, and I know I will be treated like a war criminal and beaten if my neighbours find out I am doing this, but I have no choice -- I need the money to help keep my family alive."
As far as Haglund is concerned, if he manages to prove once and for all what happened to the 8,000 Srebrenica Muslims listed as missing, he will have succeeded. "One of my aims is to establish an irrefutable historic record so we can not only convict the people responsible for these deaths, we can stop the revisionists who try to rewrite history as well," he said. |
NOVA KASABA, Bosnia, July 23 (Reuters) - U.N. war crimes investigators uncovered seven more bodies on Tuesday at a suspected mass grave site believed to contain Muslim victims from the Serb conquest of Srebrenica. The team of experts hauled out the corpses and wrapped them in white sheets before storing them in refrigerated containers.
Serbs say the corpses in the mass graves were the victims of fair military combat, or were killed in fighting in 1993. Certainly the shell casings along the roadside around the site, and the hundreds of bleached bones that lie above the ground in surrounding hills suggest bloody events took place. "I don't know how many soldiers fight with their hands tied behind them," said Haglund. "And we've found shell casings in the (grave) matrix that were manufactured in 1994."
Berserkistan, July 18 · Investigators Opening Largest Mass Grave of Srebrenica Victims
Berserkistan, July 18 · Bosnian Serb Official Confronts the Dead at Cerska
Berserkistan, July 13 · Muslim Commander Vows to Regain Srebrenica
Berserkistan, July 13 · Women of Srebrenica Starting Over
Berserkistan, July 11 · World Pauses to Remember Anniversary of Srebrenica
SREBRENICA
Berserkistan, July 3 · Mladic Promised Safety to Srebrenica Muslims
Berserkistan, May 29 · Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Srebrenica Arms
Berserkistan, Massacre Hill Jim Bartlett in Bosnia's Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Ghosts in the Woods Berserkistan Investigates Srebrenica Massacre Site
Serbs Massacre Muslims in "Safe Area" of Srebrenica
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia United Nations
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia CalTech's Bosnia Site
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