SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) – Nedzad Avdic felt the blood of the previous victims sticking to his bare feet as he walked with his hands tied behind his back toward the exit of a school to be shot.
The voices of hundreds of other male Muslim Bosnians from Srebrenica echoed from the classrooms as the soldiers demanded that the prisoners chant “Srebrenica was and always will be Serb!” as gunfire killed them one by one outside.
It was 17-year-old Avdic’s turn to become one of the 8,000 men and boys killed after the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica fell to Serb forces. As the 20th anniversary of the carnage of July 11-13, 1995, approached, Avdic decided he needed to speak out publicly.
“I just wanted it to be quick,” Avdic, now 37, told The Associated Press at the school in the village of Petkovci, where Serb troops brought him and other men caught as they tried to flee Srebrenica.
From the 15,000 men and boys who headed over the mountains toward government-held territory, the Serbs hunted down 6,000 after detained 2,000 others who had surrendered immediately. They were then shot at various sites around the town. The slaughter was the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.