The following text is an English translation of the summary of a series of articles by Mr. Bedrudin Gusic, who had the unenviable task of serving as the elected chairman of the Committee of the Islamic Community in Banja Luka from May 1992 until November 1994.
Mr. Gusic's articles about life in Banja Luka under Serb nationalist occupation originally appeared in the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje, 16-23 March 1995.
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As the chairman of the Committee of the Islamic Community in Banja Luka, a job I performed on a volunteer basis from 21 May 1992 until 7 November 1994, I had the opportunity to experience at first hand the suffering of the Bosniak people and to witness the devastation of our sacred sites and religious buildings in the city.
I will try to highlight some incidents during the last two and a half years, in the period from May 1992 until November 1994. The incidents I have put on paper I have written mainly from memory, because most of the notes I had written on these events had to be destroyed as a precaution [when I fled the city].
Before I was elected chairman of the Committee of the Islamic Community, I had been employed in the "Apoteka" pharmaceutical firm as the deputy director. At the time I did not comprehend that these two functions were incompatible and if I had, perhaps I would have resigned my post in the Islamic Community. Since I hadn't served in the army, they didn't call me up to join the reserves, but by the end of 1991 I had become a "suspicious" person. In the same period, the managing director of the firm, Slavica Radosevic, a Croat woman, was replaced. Brdjanin and Vukic told her not to bother applying to be reappointed, because she would not stand a chance. She understood the message and resigned; her post was given to Milenka Vucen, an inexperienced but ambitious Serb woman. At the start of the new year 1992, all three religious communities in the city were holding services and praying together for peace. On 6 January 1992, as usual, our religious community sent our best wishes for Orthodox Christmas to the representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church and to Jefrem Milutinovic, the Serbian Orthodox bishop of Banja Luka. On 6 April they did not return their good wishes to us on the Bairam [Muslim holiday], but that was the time when everything actually started in Bosnia.
On 26 June 1992, I was replaced as the firm's deputy director. I did not regret it, as I wasn't the only victim of of the racist policy of replacing all non-Serbs in leading positions in the city.
I can still remember a day in May 1992, when we were informed that a train had stopped at the Banja Luka railway station with several thousand Bosniaks crammed into cattle wagons, people who had been expelled from Kozarac and Doboj. The train stayed at the station for two or three days. We tried to smuggle some food, drink and medicines to these people, but the Chetniks (Serb nationalist forces) did not allow us to approach the train. We heard that some people had died in the cattle-cars.
In the summer of '92, in the area of the municipality of Prijedor 60 religious buildings were destroyed. That summer [the concentration camp of] Manjaca started up as well. We received information that there were 14 imams (Muslim clergymen) from Prijedor, Sanski Most and Kljuc held in the concentration camp, and also a Catholic priest from Ljubija. By the end of August '92, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) we succeeded in getting them released from the camp.
On 23 September 1992, our imam, Zahid Makic, was robbed and murdered on his way home. The day before his funeral,on 25 September, Cyrus Vance and Dr David Owen came to visit Banja Luka and the representatives of all three religious communities had a meeting with them. Referring to the visit of Vance and Owen, Ms. Zora Samara, at the time the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper "Glas Srpski" (Serbian Voice), told me that the day after the murder of Zahid Makic she had met Radovan Karadzic in the Hotel Bosna. He was reading "Glas Srpski" - the 24 September issue - and the article about Zahid Makic and four other civilians murdered the night before caught his attention. The official newspaper report said these murders did not have any political background. Karadzic was angry, and he told Zora that if those murders hadno political motives, "they should have been made up" as it would have been useful for the Serbs to be able to present to Vance and Owen a story about a "Muslim plot."
However, during their visit I can only confirm that our delegation spoke about the suffering of our people in the city and in the Banja Luka region, stressing the devastation of our mosques and of our community's other religious facilities.
There is no Bosnian in Banja Luka who could forget the year 1993.
On 5 March 1993, at approximately 1:30 p.m., just across from the Ferhadija mosque [in the center of Banja Luka], near the "EX" Inn, whose owner was the criminal Momo Djukic, some Chetniks tried to murder Mehmed Zahirovic, a mufti (official expounder of Islamic religious law). By pure coincidence, some armed Serbs came by and prevented the murder.
The first mosque inside the city of Banja Luka to be destroyed was the Sefer-Beg mosque, devastated on 9 April 1993. It happened right after midnight during the curfew which was, for all intents and purposes, enforced for non-Serbs only.
On 6 May 1993, as the city's Serbs were celebrating Djurdjevdan (the feast of St. George), their holiday, I felt a little bit uneasy as we had already had the experience that whenever they had a holiday they took it as an occasion for revenge against us. On the morning of 7 May 1993, I was told that the Ferhadija mosque had been totally devastated [by an explosion in the night], so I went there to see for myself. There were a lot of people there, but the police did not let anybody come close and we had to watch the site from a distance. Shortly afterwards I met my friend Ibrahim Halilovic, the chief mufti of Banja Luka, and we went together to the mosque across the Vrbas river to say a prayer. When we came back, somebody told us the police wanted to talk to Halilovic. As we approached the building of our Community [next to the Ferhadija mosque], we saw trucks and bulldozers cleaning up the place where the mosque had been, taking away everything that was left of it to an unknown destination. In the yard [of the Islamic Community building] there were policemen who had come "to save" Halilovic's car, because, they said, they were afraid "somebody could blow up the Community building so the car could damaged as well." The policemen brutally threatened Halilovic with arrest if he refused to open up the garage, so they finally took the car and left. The most sadistic person among all those Chetniks was Pero Mudrinic, the chief commander of the police station.
We went together to Sadikovic's home. A lot of people came to his place to pay visits on that day, 7 May 1993. Jovo Turnjanin came as well; he had just come back from Pale and introduced himself as the "vice-minister for non-Orthodox religions", said he was sorry about the Ferhadija incident and offered us his help if we had any problems. Franjo Komarica, the Roman Catholic bishop of Banja Luka, came as well. He expressed his sympathy and I still remember his friendly words.
Also on 7 May 1993 I heard that the Arnaudija mosque had been destroyed. Accompanied by Sadikovic, I went to the place of the incident and the scene was by now a familiar one: a lot of stones, shocked people, and the inevitable police security. According to some eyewitnesses, on 6 May 1992, at approximately 11 p.m. - the evening before the destruction of the two mosques - from their windows they had seen police blocking off the streets near the Ferhadija and Arnaudija mosques, and then they heard military trucks stopping in front of the mosques. Moreover during the same night, thewindows of some of the houses and apartments in the immediate vicinity of the mosques were opened wide. Therefore, some people must have been informed about what was going to happen. Among those people was Djuro Bulic, the third-in-command at the Security Services Center (CSB).
The following evening, we had no electricity. I received a phone call from Branko Gudalo, who told me to report immediately to the police station. Some fifteen people were there; some of them were wearing uniforms. They were watching television as they - unlike us - had electricity. Branko Gudalo approached me and told me he was investigating the destruction of the Ferhadija and Arnaudija mosques. Dusan Rodic, my neighbor, was also present. They started to ask me whether we suspected anyone in particular or had noticed anything suspicious. I told him we had not, and that I was sure they would find who was responsible since they were the specialists. Afterwards,Branko Gudalo showed me an unverified "document" about the necessity of pulling down the damaged minaret of the Ferhadija mosque, since it allegedly posed a danger for passersby and the surrounding buildings. He officially announced that the minaret would be demolished that same night (7-8 May 1993).
On 8 May 1993, after midnight, the remains of the Ferhadija were brought down. We heard a loud explosion and cheering from the surrounding high-rise apartment blocks, where mainly officers of the former Yugoslav National Army lived.
During the next few days, we were busy sending a series of letters to Banja Luka's mayor, Predrag Radic, pleading with him to prevent the remaining fragments of these sacred buildings from being taken away to the city dump, but all our letters remained unanswered. Branko Gudalo was the one who personally supervised the dredgers as they were leveling the ground where the minaret once stood. Gudalo said this was "necessary in the interest of the investigation."