Ibrahim S. RALJEVIĆ 

IBRAHIM IBRO RALJEVIĆ, son of SALIH, born on July 12, 1918, in Mostar. He worked as a blacksmith in the coal mine. He was a member of the Communist Youth League (SKOJ) and the Workers’ Youth of the Coal Mine, as well as a football player for FC “Velež”. He was taken from his workplace two days before the liberation of Mostar, on February 12, 1945, and along with a group of other Mostar residents, he was transported to Sarajevo where he was executed*. He was killed in retaliatory action by the Ustashe shortly before their withdrawal from Sarajevo in the final days of the war in 1945. Following an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the notorious ustasha leader Maks Luburić in early March 1945, Luburić took control of the judiciary in Sarajevo and established his own Special Court. This so-called Special Court, through two verdicts, UKP number 1/45 and UKP number 2/45, published in the last issue of the Ustasha “Novi list” on April 3, 1945, sentenced dozens of people to death. In the early morning of March 28, 1945, seven days before the city’s liberation, the Ustashe publicly hung 56 individuals at Marindvor, and more bodies were found in Luburić’s villa, some of which could not be identified due to the mutilation of their remains. Ibrahim Raljević’s name was published as number 14 on the notice/notification of the death sentence by shooting.

*Although Jasenovac is listed on Ibrahim’s memorial plaque as the place of death, it appears that he was executed in Sarajevo, as indicated by Luburić’s notice.

Ibrahim’s 55-year-old mother, Fata Raljević, previously married to Oručević and a mother of three children, gave a statement to the “City Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes by Occupiers and Their Collaborators” after the war on October 5, 1945. She also believed that her son was killed in Sarajevo.

“On February 12 of this year, Ustasha Keka Komljenović, along with some other Ustashas, took my son Ibro from the workshop at Rudnik. He was 27 years old, married with one child. He was taken to Sarajevo with many other arrested residents of Mostar, where he was shot by the Ustashas of Maks Luburić a few days later. Ibrahim was the breadwinner for his wife Zineta and their little daughter Nadija, as well as for my (illegible, note: possibly “elder”) sister Hiba and brother Ćasim, who are students. He worked as a blacksmith. His monthly income before the war was around 2,000 pre-war dinars. I hold Dr. Šoić, the chief of Mostar police, and his deputy Josip Mašić responsible for his abduction and death, as they were the main commanders at that time, along with Keka Komljenović and his accomplices, as well as Maks Luburić.”