"Babo, babo, gdje si?" – The Boy Who Survived the Shooting at Orahovac

Childhood in besieged Srebrenica

Fahrudin Muminović grew up in Srebrenica. His mother died in 1993, 26 days after giving birth to her daughter Fahreta. According to Radio Free Europe, she died because of a lack of medicine in the besieged town.

Capture

After the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, Fahrudin, according to Radio Free Europe, was captured together with his father in Urkovići and taken with other neighbours toward Zvornik. Sources differ regarding his age: he was six, perhaps seven years old.

The shooting at Orahovac

On 14 July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces shot captured Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica near Orahovac, close to Zvornik. According to BIRN data, more than 800 men and boys were killed, while the Hague Tribunal indictment states that there were about 1,000 prisoners who had previously been held in the school in Orahovac. The prisoners were transported from the school's gymnasium to a site along the railway line, where a firing squad killed them in groups. The shootings lasted the whole day. According to the sources, members of the Zvornik Brigade of the Vojska Republike Srpske took part in them.

Testimony of protected witness PW-101

Before the Hague Tribunal, a protected witness under the pseudonym PW-101 testified, a member of the logistics unit of the Zvornik Brigade of the VRS from the barracks in Karakaj. According to his statement, after the shooting of one group, a bloodied boy rose from the pile of bodies. According to testimonies, the boy called out: "Babo, babo, gdje si?" ("Father, father, where are you?")

The witness stated that a tall officer with a moustache, whom he believed to be a lieutenant colonel or a colonel, ordered the soldiers to finish the boy off. When they refused, according to the same statement, he ordered that the boy be shot together with the next group of prisoners. The witness could not confirm who was issuing the orders. According to an account attributed to witness PW-101, the boy pleaded: "Baba, ne daj da me odvedu, molim te." ("Father, don't let them take me away, please.")

PW-101 stated that he did not return the boy to the school but drove him to the hospital in Zvornik. The defence in the Popović et al. case challenged this version: according to one claim, the boy was returned to the school in Orahovac, and according to another, the witness drove him to the hospital on the order of his commander. The witness rejected both claims.

Fahrudin later said of that day: "I stayed alive, I was only wounded in the leg and arm." According to Radio Free Europe, he was driven to the hospital in Zvornik by a man whom Fahrudin perceived as a doctor, in a white jeep with a Red Cross sign.

The hospital and return to family

Fahrudin was wounded in the arm and leg and spent about eight months in the hospital in Zvornik. According to the portal genocid.ba, he remembers nothing from that period. His uncle Ramo Muminović searched for him for months. According to the same source, after a long search the boy was found by the Red Cross, which on the third attempt managed to transfer him to Tuzla.