In Trnopolje, he could see from his cell window women prisoners being repeatedly raped. One day, a group from the camp was sent to gather corpses of victims from artillery shelling.” We found 620 bodies along fields, houses, roads, and we took them all to the old road between Banja Luka and Prijedor, near the Muslim cemetery Kamicani.” All the bodies had been lying there for days.
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Tales of Horror Keep Emerging
By Nada Buric
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
7 August 1992.
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Tears welled up in Hasan’s eyes as he was told his younger brothers were beaten at a Serb-run detention camp, disappeared and probably were dead.
Hasan, 67, a retired building engineer, was one of three Bosniak men who emerged fromt he camps to tell of beatings, rapes and a harvest of corpses.
Others were Adem, a 56-year-old forest worker, and 70-year-old Mehmed. All three, who did not give last names to protect family members who might still be detained, said they survived the camps before being allowed to flee Croatia.
All sides in the Bosnian conflict are accused of having detention camps, but most accusations of atrocities against inmates emerge from Serb-run camps. [Serbs were responsible for 90 percent of all war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina according to the CIA Report published in March of 1995]
Bosnian Genocide, August 1992. Manjaca concentration camp near Prijedor, north-west Bosnia. Thousands of civilians, mostly Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were tortured and killed there.Photographer: Patrick Robert
The three released Bosniaks told their stories to an Associated Press reporter at a Zagreb apartment used as a gathering place for people from their region around Kozarac, in northwest Bosnia-Herzegovina, about 75 miles southeast of Zagreb.
Hasan said he spent 50 days in three camps — Omarska, Trnopolje and a brick-factory near Prijedor. He said when Serb forces arrived in Kozarac, aid workers told him and other villagers they would be treated like refugees. But as soon as people gathered, soldiers separated men from women and children and took the men to the b rick factory.
“We were kept in a brick stove, only three by six meters big (about 10 feet by 20 feet), with one door, no food or drink.”
Three days later, he was taken to a camp near Omarska, about 15 miles from Prijedor, where interrogators accused him of lying about his family.
“Two or three men there beat me with sticks, gun butts, hands and feet for about one hour, asking and beating, then asking again,” he said. He lost seven teeth when hit with the butt of a gun in the mouth. His collarbone was broken.
Hasan, the oldest of nine brothers, found two of his younger brothers in Omarska. They also were beaten.
After three days, Hasan was moved again, to nearby Trnopolje. He did not see his brothers again.
In Trnopolje, he could see from his cell window women prisoners being repeatedly raped. One day, a group from the camp was sent to gather corpses of victims from artillery shelling.
- Bosnian Genocide, August 1992. Prisoner in the Manjaca concentration camp near Prijedor, north-west Bosnia. Thousands of civilians, mostly Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were tortured and killed there. Photographer: Ron Haviv
“We found 620 bodies along fields, houses, roads, and we took them all to the old road between Banja Luka and Prijedor, near the Muslim cemetery Kamicani.” All the bodies had been lying there for days.
Hasan said soldiers used bulldozers to bury the bodies in an iron mine near Omarska.
About 25 days ago, women and children and men older than 60 were locked in rail cars for 15 hours, released in Doboj, central Bosnia, and then told to walk as fast as possible along a road that led to points controlled by Croats and Bosniaks.
Adem said he was released about two weeks ago with a group of older people.
“Each evening, around 10 o’clock they’d call 10 to 15 people from their lists, and then beat them for a couple of hours. We listened to those people scream from our rooms,” Adem said.
