Vareš

In November 1993, Croatian civilians fled Vareš as federal cooperation broke up and war between Bosnian Croat units and Bosniak units began The Second and Third Bosnian Army Corps took over the town of Vareš. Most Croatians had left the city within twenty-four hours, about 750 of them stayed on site. An unprecedented raid by Bosnian Army units began. Many were transported to Breza, Zenica and Tuzla. General chaos reigned. Very few police officers remained in Vareš. They could not keep order in the city and prevent the looting. The witness Ž14 recalled: ‘In that riot, Bosnian Army soldiers discovered that my mother and I had stayed and that we were Croats. We were pressured for fifteen days mainly because the soldiers were looking for food. We gave what we had. Then they tried to evict us from the house so the army could move in.

I got a decision about the obligation to work as an engineer and started to work. At around 5pm on 25 November 1993, four soldiers came to our door as police officers. Two of them stayed with my mother and abused her. They stripped her down to the waist and demanded money. They put a gun and a knife on her neck. The other two took me to a stone hut 300 meters from the house and raped me. They let me go because a police car and an UNPROFOR car were passing on the high main road, so they got scared and let me go but threatened not to tell anyone what happened to me. They beat me, but I informed the police anyway. They came to the house, rescued my mother and took me to the hospital for an examination. The perpetrators were caught, arrested and confronted. They were tried and sentenced directly in the war. The perpetrators were Second Corps soldiers from Tuzla, members of the BiH army. I know two of them were serving their sentences.’