Ferhat Pasha Mosque - Destruction

Destruction

The mosque was one of 16 destroyed in the city of Banja Luka during the Bosnian War in 1992-1995.

The Republika Srpska authorities ordered the demolition of the entire Ferhadija and Arnaudija mosque complexes, which stood approximately 800 m (2,625 ft) apart. Both mosques were destroyed in the same night within 15 minutes of each other. (It has been noted that the almost simultaneous destruction of the Ferhadija and Arnaudija mosques required large quantities of explosives and extensive coordination. Many believe that this would not have been possible without the involvement of Banja Luka and Republika Srpska authorities.)

The Serb militia blew up the Ferhadija Mosque on the night of 6-7 May, 1993. May 6 is the date of the Serbian Othodox holiday of Đurđevdan (Saint George’s day). The minaret survived the first explosion, but was then razed to the ground.

Most of the debris was taken to the city dump; some stone, and ornamental details, were crushed by the Serbs for use as landfill. The leveled site was turned into a parking lot. Several weeks after the destruction of Ferhadija the nearby Sahat Kula, one of the oldest Ottoman clock towers in Europe, was also destroyed.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia a Serb leader from Banja Luka, Radoslav Brđanin, was convicted for his part in organizing the destruction of Muslim property including mosques, and also in the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs. He was sentenced to a single prison term of 32 years.

The Brđanin case proved that the destruction of the mosques was orchestrated as part of the ethnic cleansing1|2 campaign. In addition, the Bosnian side in the Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice has cited the destruction of Ferhadija Mosque as one of the elements of ethnic cleansing and genocide employed by the RS authorities during the Bosnian War.