Ramo Biber: the Trebević Cable Car guard killed at his workplace

The cable car guard

The Trebević Cable Car carried the people of Sarajevo from the city up Mount Trebević and was one of the symbols of Sarajevo. Ramo Biber worked as its guard. According to the portal genocid.ba, which took his story from Klix.ba, he was an employee of the municipal company GRAS, originally from the village of Grivip in the Rudo municipality, and lived in Švrakino Selo in Sarajevo.

The attack on the upper station, 2 March 1992

According to genocid.ba, on 2 March 1992 Ramo Biber was at the upper station of the cable car together with the machinist Abdulah Rizvanović when the station was surrounded by a large group of armed men. They wore camouflage uniforms with white overalls and carried automatic rifles, and they introduced themselves as members of a special military unit from Rajlovac.

According to the same source, Abdulah Rizvanović managed to escape. Ramo Biber tried to flee through the forest, but he was hit and then killed by a shot to the temple. He was found near the seventh pylon of the cable car he guarded.

The sources do not agree on who is responsible for his death. According to genocid.ba, the attackers introduced themselves as a special military unit from Rajlovac, while the tourist guide Sarajevo Navigator states that Biber, who looked after the upper station, was killed without reason on 2 March 1992 by JNA forces. The perpetrators have not been identified.

On-site investigation, 3 March 1992

The following day a police on-site investigation was carried out. According to the police report cited by genocid.ba, Ismet Dahić, the commander of the Stari Grad police station, established that the cable car premises had been forcibly entered and that shots had been fired inside them. Cartridge cases from 9 mm and 7.65 mm pistols and from a 7.62 mm automatic rifle were found at the scene. Biber's jacket lay about 10 metres from the seventh pylon of the cable car, and his bloodstained sweater about 50 metres from the crime scene. The body, according to the same report, was found about 300 metres from the station, with a gunshot wound in the area of the solar plexus, fired from a distance of about three metres, and with a wound on the right temple.

According to genocid.ba, on the same day eighteen-year-old Kenan Demirović was also killed near his house at Kobilja glava.

Remembrance

According to genocid.ba, the cable car was destroyed soon after Biber's death. Anadolu Agency states that Ramo Biber was killed in March 1992 while guarding the cable car and describes him as the city's first civilian victim. According to genocid.ba, in later attacks by the JNA and Serb forces on Sarajevo, more than 11,500 residents of the city were killed.

The Trebević Cable Car was put back into operation on 6 April 2018. The upper station bears the name of Ramo Biber, and his monument stands next to it.