The Attack on the Police School at Vraca in April 1992 and the Death of Student Samir Mišić

The School at Vraca

The Centar za edukaciju kadrova MUP-a RBiH at Vraca in Sarajevo, known as the police school, trained future police officers of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The director of the center was Husein Balić.

The Attack of 5 April 1992

On Sunday, 5 April 1992, Serb forces attacked the school. According to Jovan Divjak, the attack began at about 15:10 and lasted four hours and twenty minutes, until approximately 19:30. Divjak states that the attackers were armed formations of the SDS and special units of the MUP, supported by JNA units, and that they were opposed by about 600 poorly armed students and trainees. The defense of the school was led by its director, Husein Balić.

According to the portal genocid.ba, the special unit of the so-called Serb MUP that attacked the school was led by Milenko Karišik, previously a professor of the students who were attacked, and the unit used tanks of the former JNA. During the war Karišik was the commander of the special police of the RS. The same portal describes the defense of the school as the first armed resistance to aggression in Sarajevo.

The Death of Samir Mišić

A student of the school, Samir, was killed in the attack. According to genocid.ba, he was sixteen-year-old Samir Mišić from Rogatica, a second-year student of the 20th class, who was killed in the evening near the Osnovna škola "Radojka Lakić" at Vraca and was the first victim of the attack on the school of the MUP RBiH. Jovan Divjak, on the other hand, names the student of the XX class Samir Musić from Goražde as the person killed. According to Divjak, the attackers had 11 dead.

Capture and Transfer to Pale

The attackers took over the school building and captured the professors and students. His brother Jasmin Mišić recalled: "On 5 April 1992, in an attack, the Serb aggressor took over the facility of the Police Academy at Vraca." According to him, the captured professors and students were transferred to Pale and mistreated there.

The indictment against Momčilo Mandić, at the time Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the RBiH, who was charged, among other things, with directing the attack on the center, states that the captured employees of Bosniak and Croat ethnicity were taken to the police station in Pale, where they were interrogated and beaten, and that they were held in a gymnasium in Pale until 10 April 1992. According to Mandić, the JNA sent military police, who took the prisoners to Pale.

According to Jasmin Mišić, all the other students were later exchanged. Samir did not return.

Remembrance

According to genocid.ba, Samir Mišić was posthumously awarded the Golden Police Badge for Courage for his bravery in the defense of the police school. He is buried at the Bare cemetery in Sarajevo.

Genocid.ba reports that a commemorative gathering was held on the grounds of the Police Academy of the federal MUP at Vraca on what the portal calls the 23rd anniversary of Samir's death. The wartime Minister of Internal Affairs Avdo Hebib and Professor Sead Hodžić spoke. Flowers were laid at the memorial in front of the Police Academy at Vraca, in the municipality of Ilidža and at Samir's grave. The gathering was coordinated on behalf of the veterans' association "Prva samostalna brigada Stup – Ilidža" by Jasmin Mišić.