Zekira Begić from Suha: a pregnant woman found in a mass grave

Spring 1992 in Bratunac

In May 1992, Serb forces, that is, units of the JNA, the Territorial Defence and the Bratunac police, as well as paramilitary units, attacked Bosniak villages in the Bratunac municipality. Women and children were taken by bus out of the municipality. According to a witness in the "Bratunac-Suha" proceedings before the court in Belgrade, the expulsion of Bosniaks from Suha began on 10 May 1992.

According to the portal genocid.ba, in the spring of 1992 the Novi Sad Corps of the JNA, Arkan's men and the Beli orlovi were active in Bratunac. In the "Vuk Karadžić" Primary School in Bratunac, Bosniaks were detained, beaten and killed.

The disappearance of Zekira Begić

Zekira Begić, known as Maca, lived in the settlement of Suha near Bratunac. Her husband was Mesud Begić. In some sources her name is given as Zakira Begić. She was pregnant; according to genocid.ba, she was carrying her first child and was in the ninth month of pregnancy.

How Zekira disappeared has not been reliably established. According to a text by the journalist Dragan Bursać, carried by genocid.ba, soldiers took her off a bus carrying women and children at an improvised checkpoint in the spring of 1992. Her family has known nothing about her since. The exact date and place of her death are not known.

Exhumation of the Suha grave

From 9 to 12 May 2005, a forensic team exhumed a mass grave in Suha near Bratunac. It contained the remains of 38 victims: eight children, several women and mostly elderly men. According to genocid.ba, the grave was located about 200 metres from the house of Zekira Begić.

All the bodies were in plastic bags. According to the head of the forensic team, Murat Hurtić, five children had died in the arms of women. Sadik Selimović, an investigator of the Missing Persons Institute of BiH, described a bag in which a dead mother held two dead children, and another in which the pregnant Zekira Begić lay. "One of the most difficult graves we have processed was the Suha grave," Selimović said.

Of the 38 victims, 35 have been identified. The youngest, Adina Hajdarević, was three months and 18 days old, and the oldest, Zulfa Alić, was 86. According to genocid.ba, the grave also held Sabra Hodžić-Tabaković, who was killed and burned together with two boys aged 10 and 12. In total, five exhumations were carried out in Suha.

According to the forensic doctor Vedo Tuco, as cited by genocid.ba, Zekira Begić had gunshot wounds to the head and body, and one bullet passed through her abdomen and the foetus.

Justice

According to genocid.ba, no one has been punished for the killings in Suha. Proceedings titled "Bratunac-Suha" are being conducted before the Higher Court in Belgrade against Jovan Nović­ković, accused of a war crime against the civilian population. As of 2024, no verdict has been delivered.