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Nedzad Avdic at the Srebrenica memorial site. Photo: BIRN.

After the fall of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995, Nedzad Avdic, his father and many other Bosniak men to flee through the nearby woods in an attempt to reach territory controlled by the Bosnian Army, where they could be safe.

“My father told me he would go with a column of people and that it was up to me to decide where I would go – to the United Nations compound [in Potocari near Srebrenica] or through the woods with him. We formed a long column and headed towards Zvornik,” Avdic recalled.

“The shelling began right after we had left [the village of] Susnjari. I lost my father right away and remained alone. I did not know any of those men,” he said.

The fleeing men were shelled by Serb forces and the situation became more and more difficult.

“The wounded begged for help in vain. Surrounded by all the fear and chaos, barely anyone paid attention to them. Using megaphones, Serb soldiers invited people to surrender,” Avdic said.

The Serb troops treated the men in a “fair and correct manner” until all of them had come out of the woods to surrender, he explained – but then they started to abuse and mistreat the Bosniaks, and demand that they hand over their money.

“They brought us to a meadow. Then they began mistreating us even more. They forced us to shout slogans like ‘Long live the King. Long live Serbia’ and say ‘Srebrenica is a Serb land’, and so on,” Avdic said.

In early evening, the Bosniaks were transported from the meadow towards Zvornik on trucks; neither Avdic nor the others believed they were being taken away to be shot.

“People thought they were driving us to [the town of] Kalesija, like they promised when we surrendered. However, the trucks took a road in between. We thought, if they wanted to kill us, they would have done it right away. However, they had special locations for the killing,” he said.

Avdic, who was captured in the Bratunac area on July 13, 1995 together with the other Bosniaks, was then transported to the village of Petkovic, near Zvornik, and locked up in a school building.

Bosnian Serb fighters beat up some of the detainees in the school corridors, he said.

“We heard screams and cries. The classrooms were overcrowded. No water, no air. We drank our own urine in order to survive. People died of heat, literally,” he explained.

That same night, he and the others were taken to the nearby Petkovci dam to be shot.

Blood on the ground



When it got dark, the mass killings began.

“They took two or three men out at a time. As soon as they went out of the school building, we heard a burst of fire. At that moment we actually realised we would not be exchanged [for Serb detainees in a prisoner swap], but killed,” Avdic said.

His turn came at around midnight. He was taken out of the classroom along with a group of men, tied up and blindfolded and loaded onto a truck.

“I stepped on something slippery. I realised it was blood,” he said.

The drive to the Petkovci dam took about ten minutes, then the men were ordered to get off the truck in pairs.

“When we got down from the truck, they would open fire. We tried to hide behind each other, which was a natural reaction caused by the fear. We wanted to live a few seconds longer,” he said.

At that moment, he only had two things in his mind.

“I thought to myself, I want a quick death without suffering. And I thought my mother would never find out where I died,” he recalled.

After getting off the truck, he was ordered to lie down.

“I fell down on the ground. I do not know if I fainted or if I was overwhelmed with fear and exhaustion. I was shot in my arm and leg. I heard bullets whistling around me. Another bullet hit me in the stomach in the meantime. The pain was horrible. I watched men drop dead. I was surrounded by hundreds of dead people,” he said.

After the hail of bullets, there was a pause. Avdic realised that the mass execution was over.

“One of the Serb soldiers then told his colleague: ‘Jovo, check the bodies. If you feel warmth near any of them, fire one more bullet in their heads.’ He cursed and said all of them were dead,” he said.

“At that moment a military boot stepped near my head. I thought he came to fire a bullet in my head. However, they killed a man next to me who was moaning. The pain was excruciating. I prayed to God to let them kill me because I could no longer stand it,” he added.

When the truck engine was switched on again Avdic realised that the mass execution was over, at least for that day. A short time afterwards, the Serb soldiers left and Advic saw another wounded man move.

“I asked him if he was alive. I rolled over the corpses to get to him in the middle of the night. It was creepy. We managed to untie each other. We then crawled to a ditch in bushes before the return of the army. The man took his shirt off and dressed the wound on my leg,” he said.

Hiding in the woods

The two survivors wandered through the woods for days, but had no idea where they were. While they were hiding in a forest, they watched other Bosniaks being brought there in order to be shot.

“We watched the shooting of civilians from that forest for days. Mechanical diggers loaded the dead bodies onto trucks, which drove them somewhere,” Avdic recalled.

“We were wounded and slept in the woods, in an Orthodox cemetery, in ruined houses. I did not know what day it was. We wandered through Serb villages for five or six days. We did not know where we were or where we were going. Besides all the suffering, we had to avoid Serb soldiers who patrolled the area,” he said.

After having wandered for five or six days, Avdic and the other Bosniak survivor heard a man and a woman speaking to each other in a village. They were Muslims.

“I heard the woman say: ‘Allah will punish our enemies for all the things they have done to our people.’ At that moment we realised we were in free territory. I still do not know how we got there,” Avdic said.

The name of the village in which they had arrived was Vitinica; from there, Avdic was eventually transported to a hospital in Tuzla.

His uncle was killed in Petkovci and his remains were found in several mass graves. His father was killed at another location. Many of his relatives, who went to the UN’s compound in Potocari near Srebrenica seeking safety, were also killed over the course of a single day.

Avdic later graduated from the economics faculty in Tuzla, and has since testified in court several times about what he went through in July 1995.

He has also spoken about his horrific experiences at universities all over the world; the University of Luton in Britain even gave him an honorary doctorate for his commitment to human rights.

He finally came back to Srebrenica 12 years after the genocide.

“I returned to this place for good. Srebrenica is history for some people, but for us, it is our life,” he explained.

He says he hates no one.