Suada Dilberović

Suada Dilberović
Born 24 May 1968
Dubrovnik, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia
Died 5 April 1992 (aged 23)
Sarajevo, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Suada Dilberović (24 May 1968[1] – 5 April 1992) was a Bosniak medical student at the University of Sarajevo who is considered along with Olga Sučić to be one of the first casualties of the Bosnian War.[2][3][4]

Background

Suada Dilberović was born in Dubrovnik, Croatia to a Muslim Bosniak family. She came to Sarajevo to study medicine and was in her sixth year of study when the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina started in the early days of April 1992.

On 15 November 2007 the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sarajevo posthumously awarded Suada a medical degree.[5]

Death

On 5 April 1992, in response to events all over Bosnia and Herzegovina 100,000 people of all nationalities turned out for a peace rally in Sarajevo. Serb snipers in a Holiday Inn hotel under the control of the Serbian Democratic Party in the heart of Sarajevo opened fire on the crowd killing six people and wounding several more. Suada Dilberović and an ethnic Croat woman Olga Sučić were in the first rows, protesting on the Vrbanja bridge at the time. The bridge on which Sučić and Dilberović were killed was renamed in their honor. Six Serb snipers were arrested, but were exchanged when the Serbs threatened to kill the commandant of the Bosnian police academy who was captured the previous day, after the Serbs took over the academy and arrested him.[3][6][7]

Evidence adduced during the Slobodan Milosevic war crimes trial in The Hague contradicts the allegation that it was Serbian snipers who opened fire.

Maj. General Aleksandar Vasiljevic, former Security chief of the Sarajevo Military district and deputy chief of the Yugoslav People's Army counter intelligence service, testified as a prosecution witness in the Slobodan Milosevic war crimes trial. According to his testimony, the shooting "was a planned provocation through certain members of the (Bosnian Muslim) Green Berets who were accommodated in the building of the secondary technical school next to the Holiday Inn, and they fired a shot into the crowd from behind, and the allegation was made that it was (Serbs) the Chetniks, members of the SDS that were firing from the Holiday Inn." He said, "I had security organs in Sarajevo who intercepted a message through radio communications used by the Green Berets, indicating that the operation should begin. And then came the shot. And we also found a TV clipping. I think this was Caco - that was his nickname - and a shot was taken of the secondary school building from which they came out. So there was an audio recording from radio communications and a part of a TV clipping, showing them coming out of the secondary school." According to Vasiljevic, Juka Prazina "was the one who ordered fire to be opened from the school building". He testified that "persons were arrested who were in the SDS premises [but] forensic evidence was never produced to prove that they had opened fire; paraffin gloves, bullet casings or anything like that." [8]

It is disputed between Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs who the first casualties of the Bosnian war are. Bosniaks and Croats consider the first casualties of the war to be Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić.[2][3][4][9] Serbs consider Nikola Gardović, a groom's father who was killed at a Serb wedding procession on the second day of the referendum, on 1 March 1992 in Sarajevo's old town Baščaršija, to be the first victim of the war.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Bohemsa". Bohemsa.com. Retrieved 2013-10-26.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bettina E. Schmidt; Ingo Schröder (2001). Anthropology of Violence and Conflict. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-415-22905-0. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Samuel Totten; Paul Robert Bartrop (2008). Dictionary of genocide: A-L. ABC-CLIO. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-313-34642-2. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Tim Clancy (2007). Bradt Bosnia & Herzegovina. Bradt Travel Guides. p. 120. ISBN 978-1-84162-161-6. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  5. ↑
  6. ↑ Brendan O'Shea (January 2005). The Modern Yugoslave Conflict 1991-1995: Perception, Deception and Dishonesty. Routledge. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-415-35705-0. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  7. ↑ Kemal Kurspahić (1 January 2003). Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media in War and Peace. US Institute of Peace Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-929223-39-8. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  8. ↑ "Testimony of Aleksandar Vasiljevic, Slobodan Milosevic trial transcript,". 17 February 2003. pp. 16235/16240. Retrieved 2013-10-26.
  9. ↑ Robert J. Donia (2006). Sarajevo: A Biography. University of Michigan Press. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-472-11557-0. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  10. ↑ "International Court of Justice : Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide". Icj-cij.org. Retrieved 2013-10-26.