According to protected witness B, on 7 September 1993, BH Army soldiers stopped in the village of Grabovica to rest ahead of “the continued attack on towards Mostar.” When they went down the Neretva valley two days later, they left behind 33 dead civilians in Grabovica

At the trial of Sefer Halilovic, former BH Army commander, the prosecution began its case with the testimony of witnesses that survived the mass killings on 8 and 9 September 1993 in the village of Grabovica. The then BH Army Chief of Staff and the commander of the Neretva ’93 operation, Sefer Halilovic has been charged, on the basis of command responsibility, for the murder of over 60 Croat civilians in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol.

After the first witness who lost five of his closest kin in the attack of the BH Army troops, the next to take the stand was witness B, whose parents were killed on 9 September 1993.

BH Army troops from Sarajevo started coming to Grabovica on 7 September, to “find quarters there and to rest before continuing their attack on to Mostar,” the witness says, adding that everything was quiet that day. Another group of soldiers came the next day firing their weapons in the air and making a lot of noise. He says that on 9 September, soldiers entered his house, looking for money and gold. When they left, three other soldiers came and told a Bosniak refugee who was nearby that they would “kill everyone.”

“The third group of soldiers [about ten of them] that entered straight into the house did just that,” the witness stated. He was not outside the house at that time. “I heard a shot and my mother's scream,” the witness said. He was already moving away from the house, fearing that he would be killed himself.

He identified the bodies of his parents in June 1994 in Mostar. “They had been massacred, they were in pieces,” the witness said. He hid in the woods for three days after the murder of his parents and then surrendered to the BH Army. He then spent ten days in detention “at Zuka’s” in Donja Jablanica.

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