Tomašica is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

in the

Prijedor Prijedor ( sr-cyrl, Приједор, ) is a city and municipality located in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As of 2013, it has a population of 89,397 inhabitants within its administrative limits. Prijedor is situated in ...

municipality of the

Republika Srpska Republika Srpska ( sr-Cyrl, Република Српска, lit=Serb Republic, also known as Republic of Srpska, ) is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is locat ...

entity.

Mass grave

In August 2013, one of the larger primary mass grave sites from the Bosnian War was discovered by Bosnian authorities. Exhumation activities were assisted by forensic experts from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and according to witnesses contain upwards of 1,000 Bosniak and Croat victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces. Initial media reports placed the number of remains at 360. Exhumations were postponed until spring due to winter weather, but experts are confident that the grave holds at least 850 bodies. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) gathered evidence from the area for possible use in prosecutions. Thus far 16 Bosnian Serbs have been sentenced by the ICTY to a sum of 230 years for war crimes committed in Tomašica's municipality of Prijedor. On November 25, 2013,

Theodor Meron Theodor Meron, (born 28 April 1930) is an Israeli-American judge. He served as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Residual M ...

, president of the ICTY, visited the site and stated he was "face to face with horror". Once the bodies from the grave site were found, they were taken to a mortuary to begin the ICMP's DNA laboratory system. At the end of the process, the bodies would ideally be returned to their families for proper burial. The process for identifying the exhumed bodies involves pathologists, mortuaries, autopsies, DNA laboratories, data-matching software, court orders, and much more.

Legal responses

In October 2014, the case of

Ratko Mladić Ratko Mladić ( sr-Cyrl, Ратко Младић, ; born 12 March 1942) is a Bosnian Serb convicted war criminal and colonel-general who led the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Yugoslav Wars. In 2017, he was found guilty of committing ...

was reopened in order to incorporate newly found evidence from the Tomasica grave site. The Prosecution was then able to include six expert and seven fact witnesses, and documentary evidence. Prior to this decision, the Chamber had ruled that the Prosecution could not use evidence related to Tomasica. Judges found that evidence from the Tomasica grave site held relevance. The Prosecution stated, "that the Material clarifies the organised and large-scale nature of killings in Prijedor, and the VRS's (

Army of Republika Srpska The Army of Republika Srpska ( sr, Војска Републике Српске/Vojska Republike Srpske; ВРС/VRS), commonly referred to in English as the Bosnian Serb Army, was the military of Republika Srpska (RS), the self-proclaimed Serb ...

) role therein." In June 2015, at the trial of Ratko Mladić, the forensic director of the ICMP, Thomas Parsons, testified that investigators had exhumed 385 sets of remains from Tomašica, and that 211 further remains had been removed from the site and reburied at Jakarina Kosa at some point after the war, meaning that a total of 596 bodies had been buried at Tomašica in 1992.

References

Populated places in Prijedor {{Prijedor-geo-stub