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The war in Bosnia lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The same number of lives have been ruined and Nerma Jelacic wants those responsible brought to justice. Lode Desmet brings us her story.

At the age of fifteen Nerma was forced to flee her hometown of Visegrad, a town which borders what at the time was Milosevic's Serbia, because a young man called Milan Lukic had decided to ethnically cleanse it. She describes chillingly what happened when one day a paramilitary unit under his command rounded up hundreds of her people, separating the men from the women and children. We can only imagine the fear that Nerma and her mother must have gone through in what was clearly an ethnic cleansing exercise. Miraculously that day they were spared, a fate others in Visegrad and the rest of her ravaged country were not fortunate enough to share. They were able to flee across the Serbian border and eventually to London, where Nerma became a journalist; her specialist news agency now covers war crime trials brought before Bosnia and Herzegovina's state court.  Commander Lukic has been arrested and Nerma will not rest until justice is done for crimes he was personally responsible for.

In this poignant film, Nerma makes an emotional return to Bosnia to find a country struggling to patch itself up from the horror it witnessed, and a town much different from the one she was forced to flee.  She visits the holiday home they escaped to as their town came under attack, the forest where they hid in the middle of the night and the spot where her family was rounded up and separated. Her campaign is not to forget but to track down those war criminals and bring them to justice. By seeing that justice is done she hopes to find meaning in what happened to her family and her nation.

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About Al Jazeera - Witness

Rageh Omaar presents Witness, a half-hour daily documentary series which features short, specially commissioned or acquired films gathered from independent filmmakers.
 
Each documentary reveals the unknown lives of ordinary people, following their lives, telling their stories and portraying the challenges that confront them. Our witnesses are people in a situation or those who have observed them first hand.
 
The films cover conflict, belief, the past and the future and as well as bringing new stories to light they showcase the talents of a new breed of multi-skilled, frontline journalist. In the studio, Rageh will further explore the issues raised in the films, with expert guests on the subject matter and the filmmakers themselves.