Missing Bosnian Girl Found after 16 Years

Disappeared Bosnian Muslim Baby Reappears in a Serbian Family 16 Years Later: "Long-lost Senida Becirovic [above] points to her name on the list of the disappeared."

"[I]n May 1992, a Serbian soldier -- no one knows his name or fate-- heard a baby crying in a burned-out house in the Bosnian village of Caparde. He took pity and saved the child, handing her over to a local ethnic-Serbian family."--RFE/RL (1-14-09)

Often I write about how the communist-influenced American Indian Movement (AIM) attacked, pillaged, and demolished the South Dakota village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in February 1973. A short history of the AIM can be found on the website of Joseph and John Trimbach, who have written the authoritative history of the AIM titled American Indian Mafia. According to Indian journalists, AIM "disappeared" about thirteen people during the occupation of Wounded Knee.

The Bosnian child Senida (above) has been found alive, but the remains of some of AIM's victims have never been found and are believed to be buried near the village of Wounded Knee. The assault on this small Indian village happened in 1973, not in the long-ago days of the "wild west." So far, nobody has come forward to tell the families where their loved ones are buried.

In 1985, AIM propagandist Ward Churchill published a fabricated story in the KGB-sponsored propaganda mouthpiece, Covert Action Information Bulletin, alleging that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians. In those years, the KGB often arranged for fabricated stories to be published about the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army.

The AIM lawyer, Mark Lane, turned out to be collaborating with KGB journalists such as Genrikh Borovik, according to Vasili Mitrokhin, a Russian defector who had worked in the archives of the KGB.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (1-14-09) reports on what happened when Serbian forces were turned loose on a Bosnian village in 1992:

One morning in May 1992, a teacher in Bosnia-Herzegovina named Muhamed Becirovic had driven 20 kilometers to the town of Tuzla, where he taught in a high school. He had plans for the evening, but couldn't return home to his village after work.

During the day, Serbian forces occupied the village, cutting Becirovic off from his wife, two daughters -- 2-year-old Saida and her 9-month-old baby sister Senida -- and four other close relatives.

He heard loud explosions, on TV he saw that tanks were moving in, and he heard a TV anchor saying that Muslims there were running from Serbian troops and "fleeing to the hills and forests." His village, Caparde, was one of the first villages to be overwhelmed. When he finally returned home, he house had been demolished and his family had disappeared. Some villagers were killed on the spot and others were taken away and never seen again.

By 1996, after four years without any news of his family, Becirovic lost hope and fled the war-torn country after being injured. He ended up in Germany.

That same day in May 1992, a Serbian soldier -- no one knows his name or fate-- heard a baby crying in a burned-out house in the Bosnian village of Caparde. He took pity and saved the child, handing her over to a local ethnic-Serbian family.

That family, though, could not afford to keep the child and she ended up in a local Red Cross center. The following year, in 1993, she was adopted by the family of Zivka and Zivan Jankovic, moved to Belgrade, and was given the name Mila Jankovic.

But the Jankovics were elderly and poor, and in 2006, Mila found herself once again in the care of the Red Cross. And that was when the 14-year-old girl, who had always known that she had been adopted, began a two-year search to find her real parents.

That quest ended six months ago, in May 2008. Exactly 16 years after Muhamed Becirovic lost his family, the phone rang in his home in Germany. DNA tests, he was told, had established that Mila was his missing daughter Senida. He wept for joy that his daughter was still alive, even as he wept with grief for the other six family members who remain listed as missing, presumed dead. [Full Text]