At the end of July 1992, members of terrorist organizations – the army of the so-called “Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina” (later VRS) and the reserve unit of the Rasavci police station, committed a crime in the village of Zecovi near Prijedor, where 69 Bosniak civilians were killed in just a few minutes, 29 of whom were members of the Bačić family. The bodies of some of these victims were later found in the mass graves of Hrastova glavica and Jakarina kosa, while Fikret Bačić is still searching for his wife and two children who were also killed in this crime.
The surviving civilians from the village of Zecovi were placed in one of the camps in the Prijedor municipality, namely the “Keraterm”, “Omarska” and “Trnopolje” camps, where they were later moved to other parts of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina or deported outside the borders of their own country.
Zijad Bačić, a then 15-year-old boy who managed to survive, later witnessed the killing of his family. Kidnapped from his mother’s lap, he secretly watched the most horrific scenes of his life. The painful fact for him was that his Serb neighbors did this, but even though he knew it, he decided to go to his neighbor Milan Stupar, who saved him.
The commentary follows a part of the description of the crime from the verdict handed down by the trial panel of the Court of BiH against the accused Ilija Zorić.
Sources
https://balkans.aljazeera.net/news/balkan/2015/1/27/kako-sam-prezivio-pokolj-1992-u-mjestu-zecovi
https://www.bbc.com/serbian/lat/balkan-61635472
https://www.dw.com/bs/osu%C4%91eni-za-zlo%C4%8Dine-u-zecovima-nisu-u-bih/a-67809424
https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/en/cp_article/zecovi-the-quest-for-justice/
