Sixteen Elderly People Who Could Not Cross the Mountain – Kljuna and Presjeka, Nevesinje, June 1992

Attacks on the Villages around Nevesinje

According to facts established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Serb forces attacked Bosniak villages in the municipality of Nevesinje in eastern Herzegovina in June 1992, among them Presjeka and Kljuna. In the Šešelj judgement, the Tribunal found that residents of Kljuna were also killed in these attacks. According to ICTY findings, the mosque in Kljuna was heavily damaged or destroyed by fire and explosives in 1992.

According to Radio Free Europe, 301 Bosniaks and 12 Croats were killed in the municipality of Nevesinje in June 1992, among them 26 children.

Flight across the Mountain

The story of the fate of the oldest residents of Kljuna was told by Amor Mašović, an investigator of missing persons, at the presentation of the book "Witness to Genocide" by the American journalist Roy Gutman at the University of Vienna; it was reported by the portal genocid.ba.

According to this account, the Bosniak residents of Kljuna left the village before the attack. The younger ones crossed the mountain, but sixteen elderly people were unable to manage the route. Before leaving, the younger ones left them water, blankets and a wood stove in a makeshift camp on the other side of the mountain, about eight to nine kilometres from the village. According to genocid.ba, the elderly spent seven to eight days there.

The Killing of Sixteen Elderly People

According to genocid.ba, one night "Chetniks" attacked the camp and killed all sixteen. According to Amor Mašović, there were fifteen women and one man among the dead; the youngest was 65 years old, and the oldest victim was 101 and completely blind. Mašović also states that forensic experts established that no one was killed by firearms, but that all had their throats cut. "Forensic experts established that all 16 were killed without a single bullet being fired," Mašović said.

The facts established by the ICTY in the Krajišnik judgement speak of the killing of sixteen elderly Bosniaks who were fleeing a Serb attack in the second half of June 1992, but place it in the neighbouring village of Presjeka: "In the village of Presjeka, 16 elderly Bosniaks were killed." The judgement attributes this killing to an unnamed local Serb. According to one source (Mašović, genocid.ba), the elderly residents were killed in the camp behind the mountain near Kljuna, and the perpetrators were "Chetniks"; according to the other (ICTY, Krajišnik), they were killed during the attack on Presjeka, and the killer was a local Serb. The number of victims, their age, the flight and the time of the event coincide in both sources, but it has not been explicitly confirmed that they concern the same event.

Men from Presjeka and Kljuna

According to ICTY findings, at the end of June 1992 Serb soldiers killed at least 27 Bosniak men from Presjeka and Kljuna in Dubravica.

Bodies without Burial

According to Amor Mašović, the bodies of the sixteen elderly people remained unburied until 18 December 1997, when his team entered Nevesinje.