prijava
BANJA LUKA, 10 April (FENA) - An unknown person has spray-painted a swastika and a Cyrillic four “S” with a cross on a wall of a religious building in the process of reconstruction, Banja Luka’s Arnaudija Mosque, FENA learns today.
The person also wrote "Turk rauss" (Turks, get out), and the police stated they are searching for the perpetrators.
The Banja Luka Arnaudija Mosque is the only one of the 15 mosques in this area that were completely destroyed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina that has not been reconstructed.
During the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was repeatedly desecrated. The Arnaudija Mosque was destroyed on the night between May 6 and 7, 1993, the same night when the most famous Banja Luka mosque Ferhadija was demolished, and then its destroyed parts were transported to various locations outside the city.
The old Akshamluk-minaret somehow survived the destruction of Arnaudija Mosque, and in the days after the mines were placed and the mosque was blown up, the minaret was destroyed to the ground as well.
Arnaudija’s demolition has never been officially investigated, but it is certain that the demolition was committed by an undisclosed group of nationalists as part of the ethnic cleansing policy of the entity of Republika Srpska.
In 1998, the old mosque fountain, one gate, and one remaining wall of the mosque complex, were also demolished.
The works on the construction of this religious site, which was on the UNESCO World Heritage List, began in 2017.
The Minister of Finance of the Bosnian Eyalet, during the Ottoman rule, Hasan Effendi, built this beautiful domed mosque, with integrated portico with small domes, in 1594, known as Arnaudija or Defterdari Mosque, located in Donji Šeher in downtown Banja Luka, not far from the Ferhadija Mosque.
(FENA) S. R.
