However, a confrontation of sorts has started. For some, this documentary film about one of the first crimes against civilians in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, abduction of sixteen Muslims from Sjeverin near Priboj, may help in their personal face-off with the past. The film by director Ivan Markov started the serial "Independents for the truth" in the cinema REX. It is produced by RTV B92.
Besides the faces of the criminals, the director also decided not to show the face of the only survivor of the crime, at the time a thirteen-years-old boy, Admir Djikic. He spent the last ten years in hiding, in Novi Pazar and in Turkey, and a few years ago finally moved to Sarajevo. Fearing revenge by the abductors, who are still at large, this twenty-three-years-old man, hidden by darkness, explains that he avoided the fate of his neighbors and relatives only because the men wearing military fatigues thought that he was a child of Desa and Ilija Kitic [Serbs], a married couple next to whom he set on the bus going to Priboj through Bosnia [large part of the Priboj municipality, in Serbia, is cut off from the city of Priboj. The only connection is through Bosnia, the journey that at one time did not cross any international borders]. Nine armed men, their faces covered with soot, took off the bus all passengers with non-Serb names on their personal identification cards. The abducted passengers were loaded on a truck near the village of Mioce in Bosnia and taken away, passing through two checkpoints of the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Police. Fifteen men, one of them boy's uncle, and one woman were abducted.
Families of the abducted individuals claim in the film that the bus was ambushed. They are convinced that the abductors were fully prepared to "welcome" their victims. Another piece of evidence that backs up their assertions is that most of the abducted passengers went to Priboj after receiving notes from Priboj asking them to report to their places of employment to pick up their paychecks. They hadn't worked for months before the abduction. They stopped leaving homes after a murder that took place in Sjeverin, and after the murderer was promptly released from custody due to "lack of evidence". Families of the victims claim that the kidnappers were informed in advance that Muslims from Sjeverin were on their way to Priboj. The kidnappers were also aware that fear would silence other passengers.
It seems that both the director and families of the victims can find understanding for the silence of the passengers, but they definitely have only harsh words for the silence and inaction of the officials. The documentary presents a reconstruction of events leading to and after the crime and harshly condemns both the Yugoslav authorities and some media for inexcusable silence. The witnesses interviewed in the film are convinced that that silence is responsible for the fact that the missing still haven't been found. One of the chief suspects for this crime is the leader of the paramilitary formation "Avengers" from the Republic of Srpska Milan Lukic, who has also been indicted by the Hague Tribunal. Lukic is still a free men, even though he was arrested several times in the meantime on unrelated charges. The families of the victims are also lost for words when talking about the events after the abduction, while the victims still had a chance. Ten years later, as Ivan Markov's film confirms, they are both lost for words and are losing all hope. And hope, as the director of the film "Abduction" also concluded, by showing photos taken by the perpetrators of the crime, which depict tortured and beaten men and military boots of men kicking them, is all but gone. According to one theory, all sixteen victims were tortured and killed near Visegrad.
The last moments of the victims were recorded on the photographs, which were shown in the last frames of the film. The photos shocked the audience, not so much because of their morbid nature as for the fact that the loss of hope is a cruel way to face consequences of this as well as many other crimes.