SARAJEVO, FEBRUARY 5 (ONASA-Hina) – Today, the highest officials of BiH, the Federation of BiH and the Sarajevo Canton paid tribute to the victims of the massacre committed by members of the Bosnian Serb army on February 5, 1994, by laying wreaths and flowers at the memorial in Sarajevo’s Markale market.
As determined by the investigation and verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 68 people were killed and 142 were wounded by a mortar shell that was fired from the area of the village of Mrkovići, who happened to be at the market at that moment.
The KS authorities declared today a day of remembrance for all the victims of the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted from April 1992 to February 1996.
In that period, more than 11,000 people, including 1,500 children, died in Sarajevo from artillery and sniper attacks.
The member of the BiH Presidency, Denis Bećirović, said that the least that can be shown today is respect for the victims and solidarity with their families.
He called it regrettable the fact that even today there are those who deny the crimes irrefutably established by court verdicts, but he pointed out that not a single politician can change the facts with his statements.
“When some of them declare themselves the heirs of war criminals, these are inadmissible things. I expect the EU to condemn it because such statements are dangerous for Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also for the entire European continent,” said Bećirović, obviously alluding to Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who is in glorified convicted war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić on Sunday.
The siege of Sarajevo and the terrorizing of its inhabitants is an integral part of the verdict by which the former political and military leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadžić and Mladić, were sentenced to life imprisonment
The ICTY also sentenced former Bosnian Serb army general Stanislav Galić, commander of the troops that besieged Sarajevo, to life imprisonment, while his successor in that position, Dragomir Milošević, received 29 years in prison.
Markale market was the scene of another mortar attack in late August 1995, when 43 people were killed and 84 were wounded.
This attack was followed by massive NATO airstrikes on the positions of the Bosnian Serb army, which enabled the ground offensive of the Croatian Army, the HVO and the BiH Army, which created the conditions for the Dayton peace negotiations that ended the war.