Balkans | The 19 people who were kidnapped and murdered on the train from Serbia to Montenegro are commemorated on the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

18 Bosnians and one Croat, who were kidnapped and murdered at the Strepsi station on the way from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, to the Montenegrin port city of Bar, have been commemorated on the 30th anniversary of their deaths..

On the 30th anniversary of the massacre in Strepsi on 27 February 1993, various commemoration programs were held in both Montenegro and Serbia.

While flowers were left at the memorial in Pobrizi Park in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, Mirsad Rastoder of the Bosnian National Council stated that no one who planned the massacre had been punished.

T. Gorjanc Prelević, director of the Human Rights Movement, pointed out that even 30 years after the massacre, justice had not been served.

While the Bosnian National Council (BNV) organized a program of remembrance in Prijepolje, Serbia, a photographic exhibition and a documentary film on the Strepsi massacre were also held.

Najem Kajević, a relative of the kidnapped victims, said his brother was on the train and said: “Every year we remember our loved ones with the same sadness and pain.” He said.

And in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, NGOs organized a demonstration on the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

Crowds in the capital carried banners reading “Death Train No. 671 coming from Belgrade”, “The train stopped at 15:48” and “Thirty years have passed since the Strepsee massacre”.

The Strepsee Massacre

During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the “Avengers” (Osvetnici) (Republika Srpska) led by Milan Lukić, who were involved in various crimes in that country and tried at the ICTY in The Hague, were sentenced to life imprisonment. The Army of Republika Srpska unit on the Drina River dumped 19 people, who had been kidnapped from the train station in the town of Strepsi, within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, into the Drina River after they were killed.

Although Nebojsa Ranisalvljević, who was tried in Montenegro and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crime committed in Strepsi on February 27, 1993, said at the hearing that the kidnapping was planned a month in advance and that the Serbian state bodies knew about it. incident, no Serbian institution took any responsibility in this matter.

Lukic, the leader of the “Avengers” unit, who was tried in 2009 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the crime and the commission of crimes against humanity in the city of Visegrad. In eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1994.

Although 30 years have passed, only 4 of the 19 dead have been found.

AA