Srebrenica mass grave found in Bosnian back garden

Dzemal and Zumra Memic have been living for two years with a mass grave in their back garden, probably filled with fellow Bosnian…

Dzemal and Zumra Memic have been living for two years with a mass grave in their back garden, probably filled with fellow Bosnian Muslims killed at Srebrenica seven years ago.

Zumra looks on in horror through a window as a forensics team pulls human bones from Bosnia's latest mass grave, among her bright yellow flowers, potatoes and maize plants.

The couple noticed strange humps in the garden when they returned to their home to this eastern village, having fled Serb ethnic cleansing at the start of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Now their worst fears have been confirmed. Amid the fresh earth, bones and dirty clothes protrude from a trench.

The Commission for Missing Persons began the exhumation earlier this week and believes the grave contains the remains of about 100 Muslims killed at Srebrenica. In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys after they overran the UN-protected enclave, an atrocity widely regarded as Europe's worst since the second World War.

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This is the second such grave found in Kamenica, situated 20 km from the town of Zvornik on the border with Yugoslavia.

Experts believe it is a so-called secondary mass grave, containing bodies which were first buried elsewhere but later dug up, moved and buried again, probably to avoid discovery.

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Dr Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Gen Ratko Mladic - both still at large - have been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for their role in the mass killings.

"It is indisputable that the victims were from Srebrenica and that they were executed, because some had blindfolds or their hands tied with wire or plastic rope," the commission president, Mr Amor Masovic, said. Bullets and spent bullet casings next to the bodies were further evidence of execution, he added.

At least 30 skeletons have already been unearthed. More than 5,000 Srebrenica victims have been exhumed from mass graves since 1996.