Personal testimony · Briševo · April 29, 1992 – November 17, 1992
Ivo Atlija buried his neighbours and his own father: testimony from Briševo
Ivo Atlija, a Bosnian Croat from Briševo near Prijedor, survived the attack on his village on 24 July 1992, in which his father and neighbours were killed. In the following weeks he helped bury the dead in Briševo, Stara Rijeka and Mlinari, and in November 1992 he left Bosnia in a convoy to Zagreb. He later testified before the ICTY in the trials of Milomir Stakić and Ratko Mladić.
Where and when
Prijedor
- Date
- April 29, 1992 – November 17, 1992
- Place
- Prijedor, Zagreb, Hambarine
- Coordinates
- 44.98° N · 16.71° E
A miner from Briševo
Ivo Atlija was born in Briševo, a Croat village of about 120 houses in the municipality of Prijedor. In 1992 he lived in Prijedor and, like many men from the village, worked in the iron ore mines in Ljubija.
At the end of April 1992, on 29 and 30 April, the SDS took power in Prijedor. Atlija, like other non-Serbs, was dismissed from his job and returned to his native Briševo.
Shelling of Hambarine and Briševo
From midday on 23 May 1992, Hambarine was shelled. About 400 people fled from there, mostly women, children and older men. Four days later, on 27 May, Briševo was also shelled without warning. The residents then handed over the hunting rifles and pistols they had legally owned. In the following weeks the village lived encircled, relying on what its own gardens provided.
On 24 June 1992, three or four policemen from Ljubija arrested several residents of Briševo. They were taken to the camps Keraterm, Omarska and Manjača; some of them were killed, others exchanged.
The attack of 24 July 1992
On the previous day, 23 July, a relative warned Atlija that two brigades would attack Briševo the next day. At three o'clock in the morning on 24 July an explosion woke him. The attack lasted the entire day and the following night. According to the testimony, it was carried out by units of the 6. krajiška (sanska) brigada VRS and the 5. kozarska brigada VRS.
From his hiding place, Atlija watched soldiers beat his neighbour Pero Dimač, mock his Catholic faith, strip him down to his underwear and order him to run. One of the soldiers then killed him with a shot to the head. According to the testimony, soldiers locked Atlija's mother in a pigsty. She ran to him with the words: "Run, they have killed your father."
Atlija later stressed in court that in the village "not a single person was armed".
Burying the dead
According to the testimony of Ivo Atlija, after the attack 68 bodies lay around Briševo, among them 14 women, two boys under the age of 16 and four persons with disabilities.
In Stara Rijeka, as he testified, he saw on one pile of bodies ten to twelve young men, none of whom was more than about 20 years old. The bodies in the hamlet of Mlinari, according to his words, bore injuries from a pickaxe and a shovel; according to his testimony, the victims had been made to dig their own graves.
Atlija took part in burying many bodies in several villages. Among them he buried his own father, who had three gunshot wounds in the back. According to his testimony, even after the attack he was detained and forced to collect bodies in the Prijedor area.
Attempt to leave and the convoy to Zagreb
In August 1992, according to Atlija's testimony, he and two other men spoke with Milomir Stakić, president of the Crisis Staff of the Prijedor municipality, about leaving. Stakić offered them empty houses in a neighbouring village but refused to help them leave.