The Photographer Who Never Reached Goražde: The Disappearance of Alojz Krivograd Futy in Foča

A Photographer of Wars

Alojz Krivograd, whom friends and colleagues called Futy, was born in 1964. He completed secondary school (gimnazija) in Ravne na Koroškem and studied journalism. He took photographs for the student magazine Tribuna and for Mladina, and in 1988–1989 he worked in Priština. According to the portal genocid.ba, he also worked with the magazines Start and Slobodni tjednik and with the Paris agency SIPA-press.

From 1991 he documented the war in Croatia and then in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His photographs were published by, among others, Newsweek, Stern, Observer, Time and Globus.

His Last Journey Towards Goražde

According to genocid.ba, which draws on an article in the Croatian weekly Nacional, Futy was at home in Ravne for the last time in June 1992, and then set out on his final journey to Bosnia, intending to break through to besieged Goražde. He was twenty-eight years old.

He was captured by Serb forces in Foča. From then on all trace of him was lost, and he has been listed as missing.

Captivity in Foča

According to the same source, Krivograd was captured together with his guide from Rogatica. According to Nacional, the guide was detained in Foča for 33 days and then exchanged. As Nacional states, both prisoners were interrogated by the commander of the Serb police in Foča, Zoran Vladišić, who handed the confiscated films over to his superiors.

According to genocid.ba, Krivograd was held in the Foča KPD prison, where the prison barber remembered him in solitary confinement. During 1992 and 1993, Bosniak civilians were detained in KPD Foča; many of them were taken away for so-called "exchanges" and were never seen alive again.

Taken Away from the Prison

According to genocid.ba, on 11 December 1992 at dawn Krivograd was taken out of the prison together with Aziz Šahinović, Fahrudin Maltić, Ekrem Čengić, Halim Dedović, Ibrahim Kafedžić and Nazif Lagarija. Before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in the Krnojelac case, it was stated that Halim Dedović disappeared in a group of KP Dom prisoners in December 1992 and is listed as missing; the list of victims from Foča gives, next to his name (born 1935), the date 12 December 1992.

There are two versions of the end of Krivograd's detention. According to genocid.ba, he was taken from the prison on 11 December 1992. According to some Serb statements cited by the same source, he was kept in Foča until August 1993.

The Piljak Pit

According to genocid.ba and the assessment of Amor Mašović, president of the Commission on Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the group of prisoners taken away was most probably shot at the edge of the Piljak pit. The pit is 32 metres deep and is located on Mount Maluša, about 26 kilometres south of Foča, at an altitude of 1,200 metres.

According to KGLU, a mass grave was found in the Piljak pit in 2009, and Krivograd probably ended up there as well. His body has still not been found with certainty; Alojz Krivograd is still listed as missing.

His colleague from the SIPA agency, the French photojournalist Alexandra Boulat, later said: "There was no reason to kill him, but, unfortunately, such things happen."

Foča in 1992

According to genocid.ba, from April to December 1992 around 1,650 Bosniaks were killed in the Foča area, and 430 went missing. In 2008 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced the KP Dom Foča guards Mitar Rašević to 8.5 years and Savo Todović to 12.5 years in prison.