Grisly clues in Bosnia's largest mass grave

Every few days, Ahmed Grahic, chairman of the Association for Prisoners and Missing Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, comes to Crni Vrh, hoping to turn up information about his father and two brothers. In May 1992, the Yugoslav army forced the residents of villages near Zvornik into a mass march. The men deemed to be of fighting age were driven to a school workshop, where they were jammed in. Many were killed or died in the crowded, airless quarters. The survivors were put on buses and taken elsewhere. "From that day, we've been looking for them," Grahic says. "The government of Republika Srpska never tried to help us. They just tried to cover up the crimes."

The bodies at Crni Vrh are thought to have been moved from their initial resting places in 1995 or early 1996. Some of the victims reburied there were placed in body bags of the Yugoslav National Army - an efficient solution but a strange choice for those intent on claiming no involvement of Serbia in the atrocities. Because the bags were numbered, "there had to be a list," Mr. Mujanovic says.

One foreign investigator says he expects the site to yield perhaps 300 bodies, but Amor Masovic, co-chair of the Bosnian Federal Commission for Tracing Missing Persons, predicted that more than 500 bodies would be found, thereby topping the largest previous find of 424 victims. Other investigators have said that as many as 700 might be found. Mr. Masovic is scheduled to testify at Milosevic's trial, and says he expects to be asked about Crni Vrh.

The news of such discoveries is being reported by state television and independent media in Republika Srpska. But down the hill, in Zvornik, the townspeople aren't talking. A quick sampling of residents found eerily identical quick responses that "we don't know anything." Zvornik now is virtually all-Serb, although wary Muslim residents are gradually returning to the area with the encouragement and assistance of the international community.

At a local radio station, Radio Osvit, one of the few independent news media in this part of Republika Srpska, director Zorana Petkovic, talked about the difficulty of coming to terms with what went on here. "A lot of people are guilty, and a lot of people feel guilty," she says. "A great number of people didn't have the means to stand up to it."

Ms. Petkovic says, though, that most Serbian civilians didn't know what was being done, and in their frustration tune out such news and focus instead on what they believe is anti-Serb bias in underreporting of atrocities committed by Muslims. That's typical of a continuing problem: an effort to create equivalency out of a conflict in which innocent people of all ethnicities died, but the vast majority were Muslims slaughtered in an organized effort.

"Until the international community defines precisely what happened from 1992-1995, there cannot be an awakening of the Serbian people," says Masovic.

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