"There was blood everywhere": a boy from Cerovac in the gymnasium of the school in Bratunac

The attack on Cerovac

On genocid.ba, a man who was a boy at the time and lived with his family in Cerovac, in the Hranča area near Bratunac, shared his recollection of the spring of 1992. According to his testimony, Serb forces attacked Cerovac on 9 May 1992. He states that his father Hamed Salkić and his relative Džemal Salkić were killed in the attack. According to a statement that a former detainee gave to BIRN, the body of Hamed Salkić lay for several days in a ditch near the school in Bratunac. Where and when exactly Hamed Salkić was killed cannot be reliably established from the available sources.

According to the testimony of the boy from Cerovac, after the attack about 15 men gathered again in a hiding place. They surrendered after being called by neighbors.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has established in a final judgment that from April to October 1992 there was an attack on Bosniak civilians from Hranča and Bratunac, which included killings and enforced disappearances.

The gymnasium of the "Vuk Karadžić" school

The captured men were taken to Bratunac, to the gymnasium of the "Vuk Karadžić" Primary School, where Bosniak men were detained for three days in May 1992. Figures on the number of detainees differ: according to the indictment against Sava Babić there were about 400, according to Radio Free Europe about 600, and according to the Association of Camp Inmates of Bratunac about 800. The same association estimates that about 300 detainees were killed at the school.

The boy from Cerovac describes how the guards led the detainees into the gymnasium in groups and how the school yard was full of blood. "There was blood everywhere," he says. According to witness statements, the first killings at the school were committed by members of the paramilitary unit of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, and later local soldiers also killed. One seventeen-year-old detainee at the time told BIRN that about ten detainees suffocated in the gymnasium.

Ahmet Salkić, the brother of the boy from Cerovac and, according to his testimony, the father of five sons younger than ten, was also killed at the school. According to the statement given to BIRN, Ahmet was killed with a metal rod, about an hour before the witness was brought to the camp. Another brother, Hamdija Salkić, was beaten with radiator pipes. According to the testimony of the boy from Cerovac, the killing was stopped only by an officer whom the detainees called "captain".

Pale and the road to Ilijaš

After three days the surviving detainees were transferred to a camp in Pale, where they continued to be mistreated. On 16 May 1992 they crossed into territory controlled by the ARBiH near Ilijaš.

According to his own testimony, the boy then stayed with a family in Visoko, and in mid-1993 went to his mother and brother in Tuzla. According to his account, his brother Hamdija was later captured in Ahatovići and killed in a camp near Ilijaš, and his remains have not been found. Other available sources say nothing about Hamdija's fate after May 1992.

Victims, remembrance and justice

According to official data, 603 Bosniaks were killed in the municipality of Bratunac in 1992. Victims from Bratunac from 1992 are buried at the Memorial Center Veljaci, established in 2007.

In 2015 the Court of BiH acquitted Sava Babić, commander of the Military Police of Bratunac, of the charges of unlawful detention, beating and killing of detainees at the school.

On 3 September 2024 the Court of BiH issued a final judgment sentencing Milan Trišić, a member of the Territorial Defense of Bratunac and the Bratunac Brigade of the VRS, to 13 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed against civilians from Hranča and Bratunac in 1992. In the first-instance verdict of 13 December 2023 he had been sentenced to 15 years.