Bosniaks are unhappy with The Hague: The Croats who massacred the village are already free
On the next anniversary of the destruction of the Bosnian village of Ahmici by a Bosnian Croat unit, Sarajevo leaders finally complained about the selectivity of the Hague “justice”.
This was reported by the Bosnian media, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The representative of the Bosniak community in the Presidium of BiH, Šefik Daferović, and the nominal leader of the Bosnian Muslims, the head of the largest Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, Bakir Izetbegović, took part in mourning ceremonies on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the destruction of the Muslim village of Ahmici, near the city of Vitez, by Bosnian Croat units.
“Today we mourn and pay tribute to the memory of the 116 treacherously killed residents of Akhmichy on this day 27 years ago,” Dzaferovic said. “A crime against humanity that the then commander of the European peacekeepers EUFOR in Vitez called genocide, and a genocide against the inhabitants of this place that cannot be forgotten...”
He also noted that to this day all the victims of that massacre have not been found and not buried with dignity, many of its perpetrators escaped punishment, and those who led it, convicted at one time by the Hague Tribunal, have already been released, are respected and honored in their community, have social protection, which cannot serve as a basis for peace in Bosnian society.
In turn, Bakir Izetbegovic called what happened in Akhmichi “an attempt at genocide,” since the goal of the Croatian troops was to exterminate the local population, despite the fact that the youngest victim was only three months old, and the oldest was 90 years old.
“We have a duty to the residents of Akhmichi that must be fulfilled - to find all the bodies and bury them,” Izetbegovic said. “And bring the direct perpetrators of this terrible crime to justice.” You have all seen how Croatia treats Dario Kordić (the military leader of the Bosnian Croats, the ideologist of the expulsion and destruction of the Bosniaks in central Bosnia), it is a shame! And the current community of Vitez must demonstrate a different attitude towards the victims and the population of Akhmichy, show the participation that they are obliged to demonstrate!”
It was no coincidence that such words about the municipality of Vitez were spoken by the leader of Bosnian Muslims, since after the war of the 90s, during ethnic cleansing, the share of the Bosniak population of the municipality decreased, while the Croatian population, on the contrary, grew, and today makes up more than 55% of the residents there.
In 1993, separatist formations of Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims, when united as a united front, when separately opposed to the Bosnian Serbs, clashed with each other in a fierce confrontation. The Bosniaks intended to create a mono-ethical and mono-confessional state, the Croats wanted to achieve independence for their quasi-state formation Herzeg-Bosna, with the prospect of its annexation to Croatia.
EUFOR on the ashes of the Bosniak village of Ahmici, cleared by Croatian punitive forces.
The defense plant in Vitez, which was under the control of the Croats, was needed by Sarajevo to create its own weapons production, so in April 1993, having superiority in manpower, it was they who launched the attack on the positions of the Bosnian Croats. Since the Bosniaks believed that they would defeat the enemy with the help of a blitzkrieg, the local Muslim population was not evacuated from the combat zone.
With a sudden attack, the Muslims defeated the Croatian units in Zenica, expelling the local Croatian population from there and from the surrounding villages, with the accompanying looting, robberies, reprisals against civilians and prisoners, and rape. In response, the so-called “anti-terrorism”, but in fact punitive Croatian unit “Jokers”, early in the morning attacked the Muslim village of Ahmichi, destroying everything that the militants could reach.
The destroyed mosque became one of the symbols of the Bosnian war, and Western propaganda often attributed this act of vandalism to the Serbs) and killing all living things, including domestic animals.
The ICTY sentenced Bosnian Croat military leader Dario Kordić to 25 years in prison for this and other similar crimes in central Bosnia, but after serving a third of his sentence he was released from the Austrian prison where he served his sentence. Several punishers from the “Jokers” unit received different sentences: Miroslav “Cicka” Brala - twenty years, Pasko Ljubicic - eight years and was released after serving two-thirds of the term, Tihomir Blaskic received nine years.
It should be noted that the commanders and political leaders of Bosnian Muslims, such as Naser Oric, Ahmet Sejdic and Eyup Ganjic, who committed such massacres of civilians and prisoners of war, were, as a rule, acquitted by The Hague, and in their homeland, as well as Dario Kordic are celebrated as heroes and they are considered respected people.
Dario Kordić in the 1990s.
At the same time, based on openly fabricated and unproven facts, the tribunal massively imprisoned Bosnian Serb commanders, giving them maximum sentences, despite the fact that an impartial analysis of the civil war in Yugoslavia allows us to conclude that, unlike the formations of Croatian, Bosniak and Albanian separatists, Serbian units did not carried out massive and systemic ethnic cleansing and reprisals, with the exception of individual crimes of specific fighters and commanders.
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