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

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