Last Lunch of the Ristovic Family
by Vlado Mrkic
Dani, Sarajevo, Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H, January 7 2000
None of the people we talked to during that day could tell us anything about the motives for the crime or its perpetrators. All of them agreed that the Ristovics were not murdered by their neighbors, but it was strange that the murderers broke into the house exactly when all the members of the family were inside. "As if someone watched the house and made sure that all of them were inside so that he could kill them all at once," someone saidIt has recently been announced that two suspects in the murder of the six members of the Ristovic family had been arrested. This crime took place at the very beginning of the war, on July 8 1992 in Gornji Velesici and, according to all assessments had wide ranging consequences, above all influencing accelerated departure of Serbs from that part of Sarajevo. The cruelty of the crime was especially surprising, because six persons were murdered in the middle of the day, in their own house, while having a lunch. The victims were: Radosava Ristovic (61) and her sons Pero (born in 1951) and Obren (born in 1955), their sister Bosa (born in 1961), Danilo Ristovic (14) and Mila Ristovic. Dusko Ristovic was wounded. Stojanka Mastilo, a friend of Mila Ristovic was also in the house at the time of the crime. She hid behind a couch and was not hurt.
Two days later, on July 10, Oslobodjenje published a short and terse statement by the Ministry of Defense and the Chief Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Bosnia-Hercegovina which, with small mistakes, listed the names of the victims. According to this statement, the crime was committed by "three unidentified murderers who drove away in a Volkswagen 'Golf'; the car had no number plates and was marked with the insignia of the Territorial Defense".
Traces of Crime
A day later, on July 11, I went to Gornji Velesici in order to write a longer report "from the spot". At the time, the editorial staff of Oslobodenje was located in the building of the then rail-transport company, across the street from the Presidency building. Salko Hondo was the photographer on duty. I asked him to come with me and, after thinking for a moment, he asked:"Do we dare?"
"Of course we do."
"Are they shooting over there?"
"They are shooting everywhere."
"We shall die."
"No we shall not."
And really, they were shooting everywhere. We passed the Military Hospital, next to the burnt and demolished building of the train station. After a checkpoint next to the present hotel "Grand" we stopped at the police station which was located just before the start of the climb towards Velesici. We contacted the commander. After a short conversation he said that we could continue, but he gave us an escort, one of his men. Musan Balovic, a quiet and peaceful man, a police reservist, came with us. We went through narrow and steep streets of Velesici. We were stopped by a sentry somewhere near the peak,. Salko recognized a friend among the guards. He immediately jumped out of the car and made a few photos, convinced in the drawing power of his profession, just as he had done many times during the previous twenty years of our teamwork. His friend had a house nearby, next to the road. When we continued, Salko said: "He said to stop by on the way back. He'll get us greens for a pie."
Musan Balovic suggested to visit the house of Mirko and Trifko Bozic, brothers who knew the Ristovics well. We followed his advice. The Bozics lived in two pretty houses with a common yard and big produce gardens. We set at a table in the yard. Mirko offered us with brandy. We talked for about thirty minutes. They said that their families had been living in Velesici for 300 or 400 years. They told us a bit more about the Ristovics. Pero was a representative in the Bosnian Parliament for a while and worked in "Bosnalijek" [a pharmaceutical company] before the war. His brother Obren was a farmer, mother Radosava was very ill and was bedridden. Bosa, Pero's and Obren's sister, worked for "Astra". Danilo Ristovic was their cousin, as well as Mila and Dusko.
From there, we went together to the house where the murder had been committed. It was locked. We were greeted only by two dogs. All around the house there was some heavy silence. The day was nice, sunny and warm, seemingly an ordinary summer morning; tall, already overripe grass was swaying on meadows, but the feeling of impending death was omnipresent.
Soon, Todor Ristovic, the father of the murdered boy Danilo, came. He brought a key and I remember that when he opened the door a gray cat ran out of the house.
Traces of crime were visible everywhere. The Ristovics were sitting around the table, on the couch and armchairs, in a semicircle along the walls of the kitchen; in one corner of the kitchen, there was a cooker on which there was still a pan with food. Everywhere around us, on the floor, table, couch, we could see shards of broken plates and dishes. From one corner to the other, from the entrance door, all over the wall on the opposite side, under the window all the way to the next corner with the cooker, we could see bullet holes at the height of the sitting adults and larger or smaller blood stains.
Musan Balovic's Story
Musan Balovic was among the first to reach the crime scene. He told us this: "I came to secure the house and helped the neighbors to clean this up a bit; to put the corpses on the ground and cover them. Flesh cools quickly and corpses need to be put in coffins eventually. We laid them nicely on the ground. I felt badly because I had grown up with them, my neighbors. The scene in the house was horrible. All of them were caught sitting and only some of them threw their heads to the side as they died. We found Bosa sitting behind the door, with crossed legs. She was cut down over her chest and below the neck. Pero was lying between the table and the couch, the mother was on the couch; she couldn't move even before her death. I saw that her leg was broken below the knee, probably by bullets. Danilo was lying next to the grandmother, then Mila was next to Danilo, she leaned her head against him. I can't remember who set here, Obren or someone else..."None of the people we talked to during that day could tell us anything about the motive for the crime and its perpetrators. All of them agreed that the Ristovics were not murdered by their neighbors, but it was strange that the murderers broke into the house exactly when all of them were inside, although most of them were active in farming and would spend most of the time outdoors. "As if someone had watched them and made sure that all of them were inside so that they could kill them with one burst of fire from a machine gun," said one of the interlocutors. The Ristovics' house was about half way between two checkpoints, one controlling the access from Kobilja glava and the other one on the road through Velesici towards Hum. At the beginning of the war those checkpoints were manned by people of different ethnicity, some of them Serbs. However, soon afterwards, Serbs were disarmed and they did not any longer participate in mixed sentries in the settlement. Even before the murder of the Ristovics, all Serb houses in Gornji Velesici were searched. At about the same time, three Serb compounds, houses owned by the families Buha, Nikolic and Maric were burnt.
That is how our visit to Gornji Velesici finished that day. On the way back we stopped by at Salko's friend's place and he gave us two bags full of greens. Hunger was knocking on the door and greens were not to be ignored.
A report from Velesici was published in Oslobodenje the following day, under the headline Last Lunch of the Ristovic Family. Along with the report Oslobodenje published a statement by the Bosnian Police which, among other, stated: "All competent institutions are engaged in an intensive search for the perpetrators of the crime and concrete results of the search can be expected in the near future. The public will be immediately informed once the perpetrators are found. Regardless of the motive, ethnicity or religious affiliation of the perpetrator of this misdeed, it is directly directed against common life in this region and supports the goals of those forces that want to endanger foundations of the system of the sovereign and independent Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina. We want to assure the domestic and foreign public, and especially citizens of Serb nationality, that state institutions of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina will provide for their personal safety and protect their property, with all means at their disposal..." The statement was signed by the then minister of the Internal affairs of Bosnia-Hercegovina Jusuf Pusina and the Minister of Defense of Bosnia-Hercegovina Jerko Doko.
Instead of an Epilogue
In practice, that was the end of the official story about the crime in Gornji Velesici. The war continued to ravage the country and in it there was no space for our small lives and fates. The six Ristovics were buried at the "Lav" cemetery, in three graves: mother Radosava in one, two brothers and their sister in the second grave and Danilo and aunt Mila in the third grave."Had someone asked me for an opinion, I would have buried them here, on their land and lit candles for their souls every three days," Mirko Bozic told us at the time.
A day after our return from Gornji Velesici, Salko Hondo told me at the editorial office:
"The pie was really good. Shall we go back again to get more greens?"
"Of course."
"How about tomorrow?"
"No problem."
"I'll bring the photos along."
"Please do."
We did not go to Velesici that day. The next day, when I opened the newspaper in the morning, the first headline I saw was "Salko Hondo Died". I day before a cistern with water arrived to the Ciglane market. Salko was sent to "make a photo". A grenade fired from the Serb positions hit an electric pylon on the bridge near the market and the shrapnel scattered all over. The papers published the last photo made by Salko: people queuing for water, canisters and barrels.
I met Todor Ristovic, the father of murdered boy Danilo, a few days later in the city. He had an accreditation of the Armed Forces of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
"Stop by when you get a chance. I can give you some milk."
"I do not know where you live."
"Ask someone, everyone knows where I live."
A few days later, I went to get milk. I met a young man near the peak of Velesici.
"Do you know where Todor Ristovic lives?"
"I can take you there."
He got in a car and showed me the house. I stayed for about ten minutes. Todor's mother, an elderly woman wearing black as a sign of mourning, poured me a liter of milk in a plastic bottle. I paid and headed back. As soon as I left Todor's courtyard, the man who showed me the house stopped me. He took some sort of a military identification from his car and said:
"I'm taking you to the Police."
The Military Police was quartered in the building of the primary school at the entrance to Velesici. I spent at least four hours there waiting for a commander who was somewhere in the field. When he came back he told me to write a statement: who I was, what I did, where I went, why etc. I wrote a statement. He read it and said I could go. I remember that in the end he said: "I don't want you hanging out with Chetniks [derogatory term for Serbs]. People die easily these days."
I didn't go to Gornji Velesici after that, until the end of the war. That autumn I read in the newspapers that Todor Velesic had been arrested as a member of the "Velesici group of Chetniks" and sentenced to four years in prison. Mirko Bozic was also arrested soon after the murder of the Ristovics and spent the whole war in the Central Prison in Sarajevo. Both of them were exchanged just before the end of the war. Trifko Bozic was taken away from his home in the autumn of 1992 to some barracks, beaten to death and left to die in the street. His wife Natalija found his body and buried him at the Kosevo cemetery. To this day she lives with her son and his family in their house in Gornji Velesici. They are one of very few Serb families remaining in this part of Sarajevo. Stojanka Mastilo, the girl who survived, now lives in Bijeljina [in the Republic of Srpska].
Translated on 2/2/2000
