Kazani pit killings

Kazani pit killings
Part of the Bosnian War
The Kazani pit, located on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Used as an execution site and mass grave by Topalović and his forces.
Location	Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date	April 1992 – October 1993
Target	Predominantly Bosnian Serb civilians
Attack type	Mass killing
Deaths	150[1]–200[2][3]
Perpetrators	Mušan Topalović, 10th Mountain Brigade of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Kazani pit killings were the mass murder of predominantly ethnic Serbs living inside besieged Sarajevo by the forces of Mušan Topalović, commander of the 10th Mountain Brigade in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.^[4][5][6]

Crimes

Memorial plaque to Mušan Topalović Caco in Sarajevo

Topalović, nicknamed "Caco", was a pre-war rock musician and gangster who became the commander of the Sarajevo-based unit at the outset of the war.^[7] He was also involved in the organization of the Patriotic League and Green Berets paramilitary units.^[8] Topalović, along with Jusuf Prazina, Ismet Bajramović and others, was one of the key criminals tasked with defending the city during the early stages of the war.^[9] Ramiz Delalić, who commanded the 9th Mountain Brigade in Sarajevo, and Topalović who commanded the 10th Brigade, controlled a large part of the besieged capital.^[10] Topalović controlled the area from Skenderija on the left bank of the Miljacka eastward.^[9] He exercised absolute power over neighborhoods, press-ganged recruits, ran black market smuggling, kidnapped and ransomed rich people, organized rapes, allocated empty houses, and likely executed more than 400 Serb fighters and civilians.^[8]

In one documented case, a family of six was gunned down by automatic weapons as they gathered to eat lunch, by assailants who were wearing uniforms of the Patriotic League.^[7][11] Jovan Divjak, an ethnic Serb general serving with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), said that local authorities had identified the killers within hours but police blocked the investigation – as in many other cases of anti-Serb violence.^[7]

The Kazani pit was located on Mount Trebević, below the positions of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) north of the city center.^[5] It was used by Caco and his men as a place for murder and as a mass grave for their victims.^[6] Serb civilians were rounded up, beaten and then killed, often by having their throats slit and being decapitated, before their bodies were pushed into the pit.^[12][13]

On May 27, 1993, Divjak informed Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović of the crimes carried out against Serb civilians in Sarajevo.^[14] He sent a five-page letter which not only detailed the killings being carried out by paramilitaries, but also listed the names of more than a dozen people who had been abducted and slain.^[15]

The magazine Dani was among the first publications to write about Topalović's crimes against Sarajevo's Serbs. In its January 29, 1993 issue, it published a three-page article about the suffering and position of Serbs in the city. In 22 reported incidents, 39 people were confirmed to have been killed, all but two of whom were ethnic Serbs whilst the nationalities of the other two victims were unknown.^[16]

Arrests

On October 26, 1993, the Bosnian government launched a police action codenamed "Operation Trebević 2", with the aim of dealing with crime in their own ranks and returning renegade military groups to the system. The action was directed against the 9th motorized and 10th Mountain Brigade of the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its commanders.^[17] Bosnian police units disbanded Caco's paramilitary group, arrested 16 soldiers and killed Caco, who one Bosniak general described as "an inconvenient witness" to wartime atrocities.^[15] Caco's accomplices were indicted, but were given minimal sentences after a trial at the Sarajevo Military Court. Four people were sentenced to six years in prison each: Esad Tucaković, Zijo Kubat, Refik Čolak and Mevludin Selak, while eight were sentenced to ten months each for failure to report a crime and the perpetrators.^[18] A total of 14 soldiers were convicted of various atrocities, with most serving a few months.^[15]

Tucaković described the torture and murder of couple Vasilij and Ana Lavriv during his trial.^[a] After describing how he hit Vasilij Lavriv and killed him by slitting his throat, he continued:

I took my knife -- it was 40 centimeters long -- and severed her [Ana Lavriv's] head from her body. I pushed her corpse into the pit and left her head on the ground. After that I ran to the trench. I had blood all over my hands and clothes. I washed, so I did not see the killing of the other two people. When I got back to the brigade headquarters, I was told that Caco was pleased with my work.^[15]

The Bosnian government's relationship with Caco and his paramilitary group proved to be complicated as their defense of the city during its siege was a priority.^[17] Alibabić and others charge that Caco was eliminated not because he was an out-of-control commander but because he had become a political liability for Izetbegović and his inner circle of SDA political leaders who were accomplices in his dirty work.^[17] Caco was ceremoniously buried at the Kovača Martyr's Cemetery during a funeral organized by the Green Berets in December 1996, which attracted a large crowd of some 10,000 people. This caused dismay among the liberal-minded public in Sarajevo and prompted General Divljak to write a letter of protest to Izetbegović.^[19]

Death toll

An exhumation of the mass graves at the Kazani pit was undertaken by investigators, with 29 bodies being recovered after a few days.^[15] However, the work was abruptly halted by the Interior Ministry and never resumed.^[15] "There were clearly more than 29 bodies in the pit," said Munir Alibabić, who at the time was the police chief of Sarajevo and was in charge of the investigation, "but I was ordered to stop all work. When I questioned the Minister of Interior, he told me this was a presidential order. I suspect that finding large numbers of bodies was politically inconvenient."^[15] Of the 15 victims that were identified, 10 were Serbs, 2 Ukrainians (Ana and Vasilj Lavrov), 2 Croats and one Bosniak.^[20]

The total number of victims killed at Kazani is not known, with estimates ranging from a few dozen to some hundreds.^[21] Victims estimates of Serb civilians killed in Bosnian government-held Sarajevo conducted by the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina officials say "at least 150".^[22] The actions of paramilitary units led many thousands of Serbs to flee the city, particularly in the summer of 1992.^[22] By war's end, the number of Serbs in Sarajevo was estimated to be in the low tens of thousands, fewer than 20% of those who had lived in the city in 1991.^[22]

Commemoration

The monument in Kazani was officially unveiled on November 15, 2021.

The first public commemoration of remembrance for the crimes in Kazani were organized by the non-governmental agency UDIK in Sarajevo in 2014.^[23] In 2016, Bosniak politician Bakir Izetbegović, the son of Alija Izetbegović, paid tribute to Sarajevo Serb war victims by visiting the Kazani pit and laying flowers at the edge of the ravine.^[24]

Memorial

For years, several Bosnian NGOs including UDIK have called on the City of Sarajevo to build-up a monument to the victims killed in Kazani in the center of Sarajevo.^[25] In December 2020, the City Council of the City of Sarajevo included a memorial to the victims in Kazani in the plan of monuments to be financed and built in 2021.^[26] In May 2021 the city announced a competition for the design of a memorial to victims killed in Kazani.^[27]

On November 12, 2021 the Sarajevo City Administration put up a monument in Kazani. On November 15, Benjamina Karić, Milan Dunović and High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt unveiled the monument.^[28] UDIK, which was one of initiators of the memorial, and families of the victims did not attend the unveiling after it was revealed that the perpetrators' names would be omitted from the plaque.^[4][29] This was one of the main requests made by UDIK, the multi-ethnic Naša stranka Party and victims' families during the design process.^[30][31][32] Others, such as the Association of Winners of the Golden Lily and the Golden Police Badge, the Association of Veterans of the Patriotic League, the Association of Generals of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the SDA and the SDP Canton Committees, had supported the omission of the perpetrators.^{[33][34][35][36][37]}

Bibliography

• The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo (2003) − Joe Sacco
• Ratni zločini na Kazanima: presude (2016, 2020) − UDIK
• Sarajevo’s most known public secret: Dealing with Caco, Kazani and crimes committed against Serbs in besieged Sarajevo, from the war until 2023 (2015, 2016, 2024) − Nicolas Moll

Annotations

1. In earlier publications, the two victims are referred to as a Serbian couple and listed as Vasilij and Ana Lavriv.^[15][38] They were subsequently identified as Ukrainian nationals and their last name listed as Lavrov.^[20]

References

1. Ljubas, Zdravko (1 August 2019). "Fate Unknown: The Long Search for Sarajevo's Missing Serbs". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
2. FBIS Daily Report: East Europe, Issues 74-84. The Service. 1996. Sljivo also admitted that, as the escort to Topalovic, commander of the brigade, he killed about 200 Serb civilians and raped several dozens of women.
3. International Human Rights Reports, Volume 7. Human Rights Law Centre, Department of Law, University of Nottingham. 2000. The Record also indicates that the applicant stated that (on unspecified dates) he had killed 200 citizens of Serb origin in the pit "Kazani" (near Boguscevac) and participated in the rapes of 40 Serb women.
4. Dzaferagic, Nejra (15 November 2021). "Sarajevo Unveils Memorial to Victims of Kazani Pit Killings". Balkan Insight.
5. Ristic, Mirjana (2018). Architecture, Urban Space and War: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Sarajevo. Springer. p. 194. ISBN 978-3-31976-771-0.
6. Moll 2015, p. 14.
7. Grigorova Mincheva, Lyubov; Robert Gurr, Ted (2013). Crime-Terror Alliances and the State: Ethnonationalist and Islamist Challenges to Regional Security. Routledge. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-13513-210-1.
8. Mann, Michael (2005). The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge University Press. p. 418. ISBN 978-0-52153-854-1.
9. Burg, Steven L.; Shoup, Paul S. (1999). The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention. M.E. Sharpe. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-56324-308-0.
10. Magas, Branka; Zanic, Ivo (2013). The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991-1995. Routledge. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-13634-092-5.
11. Schindler, John R. (2007). Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad: Bosnia, Al-Qaida, and the Rise of Global Jihad. Zenith Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-61673-964-5.
12. Wilkinson, Tracy (28 November 1997). "New Confessions of Barbarity Surface in Sarajevo". Los Angeles Times.
13. Evangelista, Matthew; Tannenwald, Nina (2017). Do the Geneva Conventions Matter?. Oxford University Press. p. 222. ISBN 978-0-19937-979-8.
14. "OHR SRT News Summary, 02 Dec. 1997". ohr.int. Office of the High Representative.
15. Hedges, Chris (12 November 1997). "Postscript to Sarajevo's Anguish: Muslim Killings of Serbs Detailed". The New York Times.
16. Semir Mujkić (2019). "Časno novinarstvo" [Honorary Journalism: How the Sarajevo media wrote about the crime in Kazan during the war]. Žurnal. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
17. Andreas, Peter (2011). Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo. Cornell University Press. pp. 94–96. ISBN 978-0-80145-704-3.
18. Edvin Kanka Ćudić (2020). "Laži i obmane". Danas. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
19. Moll 2015, pp. 24–26.
20. "New Search for Bodies Urged at Sarajevo's Kazani". Balkan Insight. BIRN. 7 March 2014.
21. "Les victimes serbes oubliées de Sarajevo" [Forgotten Serb victims in Sarajevo]. La Croix (in French). Agence France-Presse. 8 July 2016.
22. Donia, Robert J. (2006). Sarajevo: A Biography. University of Michigan Press. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-47211-557-0.
23. Edina Kamenica (2020). "Priča koja ne govori samo o zločinu: Moji roditelji nemaju grob, zaklali su ih na Kazanima". Oslobođenje. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
24. "Bosnian Muslim leader pays tribute to Sarajevo Serb victims". i24news.tv. Agence France-Presse. 13 June 2016.
25. "Više udruženje zahtijevaju izgradnju memorijala u Sarajevu za žrtve ubijene na Kazanima". Patria. 2020-10-05. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
26. "Izgradnja spomenika na Kazanima u planu Gradskog vijeća Sarajeva za 2021. godinu". Detektor. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
27. "Grad Sarajevo objavio tender za podizanje spomenika na lokalitetu Kazani". Detektor. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
28. "(FOTO) Postavljen spomenik na Kazanima: Ko je počinio zločin?". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
29. Begic, Jasmin (27 October 2021). "Sarajevo to Build Massacre Memorial without Naming Perpetrators". Balkan Insight.
30. "Spomenikom se mora pokazati poštovanje". Oslobođenje. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
31. "Naša stranka traži da spomenik na Kazanima sadrži da su žrtve ubili pripadnici Armije RBiH". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
32. "Ovo je konačni prijedlog Naše stranke za tekst spomenika na Kazanima". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
33. "Zlatni ljiljani o prijedlogu teksta Naše stranke za spomenik na Kazanima: Ovo je sramota". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
34. "Patriotska liga BiH: Zločin na Kazanima su počinili pojedinci koji su djelovali autonomno, ne ARBiH". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
35. "FB / Udruženje generala BiH podržalo prijedlog Benjamine Karić za Kazane". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
36. "KO SDA: Ne smije se optuživati časna Armija RBiH, zločin na Kazanima su počinili odmetnuti pojedinci". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
37. "SDP podržao izvorni tekst na spomeniku na Kazanima: Ne može se zločin pripisati Armiji BiH". Klix. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2020-12-22.
38. Porubcansky, Mark J. (26 April 1998). "Elusive Truth Begins to Surface as Bosnia Licks Its Wounds". Los Angeles Times.

Sources

Moll, Nicolas (2015). "Sarajevska najpoznatija javna tajna": Suočavanje sa Cacom, Kazanima i zločinima počinjenim nad Srbima u opkoljenom Sarajevu, od rata do 2015 [“Sarajevo’s most known public secret”: Dealing with Caco, Kazani and crimes committed against Serbs in besieged Sarajevo, from the war until 2015] (PDF). Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. ISBN 978-9958-884-43-6.

External links

• Dealing With The Past: Kazani as Sarajevo's Stain During the Siege Archived 2020-10-01 at the Wayback Machine