Ahmići
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ahmići is a village in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located in the municipality of Vitez in the Lasva river valley. According to the 1991 census, 1,178 people lived in the village of them 509 were Bosniaks, 592 were Croats, 30 were Serbs and 47 were others.
[edit] 1993 massacre
During the Bosnian War, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) forces indiscrimantely attacked the village. The attack began at 0530 on the morning of on April 16, 1993. The HVO shelled the Bosniak part of the village and moved in killing many Muslim Bosniaks, including women, children and the elderly, destroying a large number of Bosniak homes, and causing extensive damage to the village's two mosques.
An estimate puts the death toll at 116. The youngest was a three-month-old baby, who was allegedly machine-gunned to death in his crib, and the oldest was a 96-year-old woman. Since then many survivors have returned and have begun to rebuild their homes.
[edit] UN trial
The ICTY United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague indicted six Bosnian Croats for their roles in the massacre, four of whom had their convictions reversed. A fifth was released and the sixth continues to serve a lengthy sentence for his part in the attack. The conviction of Tihomir Blaškić, who was the HVO commander for the Central Bosnian Operative Zone, was reduced from 45 to 9 years, and he was released after serving 8 years and 4 months of his sentence.
