28 Years On, Families Still Searching for Missing Bosnian Soldiers

"We had lunch together on May 8, 1993. In the evening, he went on duty, to replace a schoolmate of his, and he stayed there until May 9. That guy, Nedim, returned home and my Fedja stayed [at the Fourth Corps' command HQ]," his mother Jadranka Huskovic recalled of her last meeting with her son.

She said that after the disappearance, she and her husband, who has since died, searched for information about Fedja for years. They appealed to the Human Rights Ombudsman, spoke to Bosnian Croat political leader Jadranko Prlic and to Mostar mayors Neven Tomic and Safet Orucevic, but without any result. Her husband even offered money for information, but nobody ever contacted them in response.

In 2007, a mass grave was found in Rimski Bunar near Mostar, containing the remains of ten Bosniak soldiers killed during the war.

"When they said they found bodies in Rimski Bunar, I said for the first time: 'I hope to God that my Fedja is there, so I can find rest at last, and find and bury him.' It was very hard to cope with that. Up until then I had hoped that he was alive somewhere, that somebody had hidden him, that somebody had helped him," Jadranka Huskovic said.

The other soldiers were buried, at the Sehitluci cemetery in Mostar, where plots have been left empty for the bodies of Huskovic, Pobric and Balic.

Jadranko Prlic was the prime minister of the unrecognised Croat-led Herzeg-Bosnia statelet, which had its 'capital' in Mostar - a city which in wartime was ethnically divided and saw fierce fighting between the HVO and the Bosnian Army.

In 2017, the Hague Tribunal convicted Prlic of wartime crimes against Bosniaks, along with five other senior Bosnian Croat wartime officials - one of whom, Slobodan Praljak, took poison in court and...