SARAJEVO – Since the beginning of the work of the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 422 persons of Serbian nationality have been identified using the DNA method, the Institute pointed out.
“Since the beginning of the work of the Institute, in the regional offices of the Institute in Banja Luka and East Sarajevo, and in the field offices in Doboj and Nevesinje, which are located in the territory of Republika Srpska, 725 persons of assumed Serbian nationality have been exhumed,” the Institute stated.
The Institute explained that Serbian nationality was assumed because one-third of this number are treated as unknown cases, because they are persons from whose bone samples a DNA profile was isolated, but, unfortunately, there is no match with the reference blood samples of family members. of missing persons, which largely leads to the assumption that these are errors during classic identification, which occurred before the establishment of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH.
The Institute denied the statements of the President of the Republic Organization of Families of Captured, Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians, Isidore Graorac, which Srna published yesterday in an article entitled “The process of searching for missing Serbs to be returned under the authority of Srpska”, pointed out that it is not true that since 2008 , when the Institute was formed, 58 missing Serbs have been found and identified to date, while all others identified were found thanks to the former Commission for Searching for Missing Persons of Srpska.
The Institute emphasized that the visit of the American Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Michael Murphy, to the Institute was “of a working nature and with the diplomatic protocol that is usual for the visit of diplomatic representatives to the Institute”.
“Meetings like this are common practice because the Institute is an open institution for cooperation with all representatives of the international community, especially for those who are ready to provide support in the process of searching for missing persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The allegations that something is being hidden from the families are not true either, because you were all informed through the media about the topics that were discussed during the meeting,” the Institute emphasized.
The Institute stated that “it is not true that this institution only aims to find missing Bosniaks, and Serbs by the way, and this is visible precisely in the Central Register of Missing Persons which was established and which brought the verification process almost to an end”.
“In fact, two years ago, the database of missing persons was published on the website of the Institute, and all families can check the data of missing persons on our page and see their status in the database, which contains the data of almost 30,000 verified cases. The same data can be checked in the Regional Database – Database of active cases of persons missing in conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which was published last year. Both databases contain data on all missing persons, including missing Serbs, whose disappearance report has been verified, and for whom the Institute is searching without any discrimination, that is, regardless of nationality or any other affiliation. In the online databases, it can be clearly seen that the allegations that those who were identified until 2008 are not included in the Central Register of the Missing are not true either,” the Institute stated.
They pointed out that all these data “are easily verifiable at the headquarters of the Institute, and in this regard, they invited Graorčeva and her organization to visit the Institute and make sure of the veracity of the stated data.”
Srna tried to check the information in the Missing Persons Database on the Institute’s website today, but that part of the website was not working.
The President of the Republic Organization of Families of Captured, Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians, Isidora Graorac, stated yesterday that the families of those killed and missing from Republika Srpska demand from the competent institutions that the authority to search for the missing be returned to Srpska as a matter of urgency, in the largest legally permitted scope.
“In this way, the process of searching for missing persons of Serbian nationality in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be accelerated and finally ended,” said Graorčeva Srna and pointed out that the families of the dead and missing are not satisfied with the work of the Institute, as well as the work of Serbian representatives in this institution.
(www.palelive.com/Srna)
