He survived a mass execution at 17. Now he's fighting disinformation and denialism.
Srebrenica massacre survivor Nedzad Avdic at a cemetery outside Sarajevo in 2015. Photo by Amel Emric / AP file via NBC News
NBC News
SREBRENICA, Bosnia — Nedzad Avdic stood on a gravel plateau with four men and boys with their hands tied behind their backs, preparing for death. Just 17, Avdic had been captured by Bosnian Serb forces days earlier. Now, he stood yards from an execution squad.
Avdic said he heard shots, felt sharp pain in his right side and right arm and blacked out. When he woke up, more prisoners were being lined up for execution. When the small truck that brought him to the site drove away, Avdic and another wounded man escaped in the darkness. After walking through the woods for days, they crossed into Muslim-controlled central Bosnia.
Last week, Avdic recounted his experience to members of the German parliament at an event in Berlin marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the United Nations-protected “safe area” of Srebrenica. Two international courts have ruled that Bosnian Serbs’ systematic killing of male Bosnian Muslim prisoners — at least 7,000 in total — was the first genocide in Europe since World War II.
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