BOSNIA-SREBRENICA/MOTHER Mother searches for son's remains 25 years after Srebrenica massacre

Record ID: 148375

  • Title: BOSNIA-SREBRENICA/MOTHER Mother searches for son's remains 25 years after Srebrenica massacre
  • Date: 1st July 2015
  • Summary: SREBRENICA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (JUNE 25, 2015) (REUTERS) TOWN SKYLINE MOSQUES WIDOW AND MOTHER OF SREBRENICA MASSACRE VICTIMS, WHO STILL SEARCHES FOR REMAINS OF HER SON, HAJRA CATIC, AND SREBRENICA MASSACRE SURVIVOR, WHO WAS LAST TO SEE HER SON ALIVE, EDMIR JAKUPOVIC, SITTING IN ROOM AND LOOKING AT PHOTOGRAPHS JAKUPOVIC AND CATIC SITTING CATIC LOOKING AT PHOTOGRAPH OF
  • Embargoed: 16th July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA6J4WTFOLNI318BMCF1UNGB5G4
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Hajra Catic worked as an administrative officer in Srebrenica when the 1992-95 war in Bosnia broke out and took her closest relatives away.
    When Serb forces stormed the town in July 1995 she was separated from her husband and son and along with thousands of other women and children sent by bus towards territory controlled by the Bosnian army.
    Seven years later an incomplete body of her husband Junuz, a former manager of a state-owned company in Srebrenica, was found in one of the mass graves in the Kamenica area.
    The last she heard of her 26-year-old son Nino was that he wounded by a land mine while trying to reach the free territory by marching across the forested mountains around Srebrenica. His body was never found and ever since hostilities ended, Catic has been searching the woods for his remains.
    "It's been a long period of time, especially for someone who's still searching. I've kept thinking that it would be this July 11 when I would bury him, then the same on next July 11, and the next one, and it's been 20 years now and I still haven't buried him. And the worst thing is that thousands of people were killed while trying to escape from Srebrenica and their bodies were never collected," Catic said while standing next to her husband's grave in the memorial centre in Potocari where more than six thousand victims of the massacre have been buried so far.
    Catic has never given up the search for her son's body. She followed his steps through heavily mined forests to the place where he was last seen alive, revealed thanks to Edmir Jakupovic, who fled alongside him and continues to support Catic in her search today.
    "I would be satisfied if I found a single bone, to give that bone a name and surname, so that I can bury him at the place I keep reserved for him, next to my husband," Catic said.
    Jakupovic grew up next to Catic's family house in Srebrenica. He was 24 when he joined the thousands of other men in a march from Srebrenica in July 1995 to escape Serb paramilitary forces surrounding the city. During the march he came across Catic's son, lying wounded from a land mine in the woods.
    "We found him wounded. We took him across the creek and reached a clearing where we put him on a blanket in order to carry him with us. At that moment Serb soldiers started shooting at us and we had to leave him. He stayed wounded on that plain while we dispersed running for our lives," Jakupovic, who often joins Hajra in her search, said.
    Catic lost some twenty members of her extended family in July 1995.
    More than a thousand bodies of the Srebrenica massacre victims still remain hidden in mass graves, river beds and the forests of eastern Bosnia.
    "I can't give up searching as long as I live. I will search for the remains of my son as long as I live and I am able to," she said.
    On July 11 Bosnia will commemorate 20 years since Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces near the end of the 1992-95 war.
    More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed in the days that followed, bulldozed into mass graves then dug up and reburied in a systematic bid to conceal the worst atrocity on European soil since World War Two.
    Over 130 recently found and identified victims of massacre will be buried at the joint cemetery in Potocari at this year's ceremonies.
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