CCPR/C/119/D/2206/2012
Lale and that the case remained open. To date, Mrs. Lale remains registered as a missing
person in the ICRC Family Links database.
2.7
Mrs. Blagojević submits that, in July 1992, she lived in the Serb parts of Sarajevo.
She could not reach Trnovo owing to the security situation and the lack of a functioning
communication system. She therefore did not know anything about what had happened to
Mrs. Popović, her mother, until 30 July 1993 when she managed to visit Trnovo together
with her family. In Trnovo, she was told by people living there that her father and brother
had been killed and that her mother was missing. In September 1993, she was informed by
persons from Trnovo that, in August 1992 during their transfer to a detention facility in
Kalinovik, they had seen a man hanging from a tree in the vicinity of the cottage where her
parents had sought shelter. In September 1993, while looking for his father’s body, Mrs.
Blagojević’s brother, Dragan Popović, found a shoe about one kilometre from the cottage
and saw fresh soil nearby. Scratching the surface he found his father’s body wrapped in a
blanket. The body was exhumed by a pathologist, who concluded that Svetko Popović’s
skull had been smashed and that he later had been hanged. Svetko Popović’s body was
buried in Trnovo a few days later.
2.8
Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Blagojević spoke to a woman 3 who had been detained by
Bosnian forces in a house in Širokari in August 1992. The woman had requested that the
commander of the Bosnian forces in the area allow her to be transferred to the cottage
where Mrs. Lale and Mrs. Popović had been staying. The commander replied that she
should not go to the cottage as all the people there were dead.
2.9
Late in 1993, Mrs. Blagojević reported Mrs. Popović as missing to the ICRC in
Grbavica. In April 1996, she reported her as missing to the ICRC in Illidža. Her brother
also reported their mother missing to the ICRC in Illidža in April 1994. They did not
receive written confirmation of their reports. On 18 December 2003, Mrs. Blagojević
received a letter from the ICRC Central Tracking Agency in Sarajevo confirming that a
tracking request had been drawn up for Mrs. Popović and that the case remained open. To
date, Mrs. Popović remains registered as a missing person in the ICRC Family Links
database.
2.10 In the third quarter of 1995, Mrs. Blagojević met Rajko Lale, 4 who told her about
what had happened at the cottage.
2.11 Owing to the difficult security situation during the armed conflict and their own dire
financial situation, the authors and their families had difficulties in obtaining information
on the whereabouts of Mrs. Lale and Mrs. Popović. Until the end of the conflict in 1995,
the only functioning domestic institution for missing persons was the State Commission of
Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Tracing of Missing Persons, which was confined to the
Bosnian-controlled parts of Sarajevo. As a consequence the authors did not have access to
that institution.
2.12 Because of the failure of the domestic institutions established after the Peace
Agreement in dealing promptly with the issue of missing persons, the authors, together with
relatives of other missing persons from the region of Trnovo, formed a non-governmental
organization (NGO) called the Association of Families of Missing Persons in the SarajevoRomanija Region in 2001. The authors instituted criminal proceedings concerning the fate
of their mothers through the NGO. In 2001 the Association, with the legal support of the
Republika Srpska Ministry of the Interior, submitted a collective complaint to the
International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of
International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since
1991 on alleged war crimes perpetrated in Trnovo. The complaint included allegations of
the arbitrary killing of Mrs. Lale and Mrs. Popović and subsequent concealment of their
remains. Towards the end of 2001, the complaint was transferred from the Tribunal to the
Bosnia and Herzegovina Prosecutor’s Office with mark “A”, meaning it had been approved
for trial and should be prioritized. In 2002, the case was transferred to the District
Prosecutor’s Office in Lukavica, east Sarajevo, then transferred again in 2003 to the Bosnia
3
4
The woman who provided Mrs. Blagojević with the information died at the end of the war.
Mr. Rajko Lale passed away in May 2011.
3