Dissatisfaction with Processing of Crimes in Prijedor

Prijedor citizens are dissatisfied with the work of prosecutions and courts, because they are still waiting for perpetrators of hundreds of murders committed in 1992 to be processed, says Edin Ramulic of the “Izvor” Association.

“33 Prijedor citizens have been sentenced under second instance verdicts for war crimes. This makes Prijedor the local community with the largest number of war crime perpetrators, whose crimes have been proved, on the planet. However, we are still far from being satisfied with the work of the prosecutions and  the courts, considering the fact that hundreds of murderers and thousands of their helpers, as well as those who gave them orders and those who participated in hiding bodies after the crimes, are still at large,” says Ramulic.
 
He says that data available to the “Izvor” Association suggest that 3,176 Prijedor citizens went missing or were killed during the Bosnian war, while more than 31,000 people were held in Prijedor detention camps at some stage.  
 
“A total of 53,000 people were deported. Their property was pillaged and destroyed. Hundreds of women and girls were raped. Sexual abuse of men in Keraterm detention camp was registered as well. The number of persons who have been sentenced so far is therefore insufficient, because it turns out that only one perpetrator per hundred victims has been tried,” Ramulic said.
 
Ramulic says that the “Izvor” Association is actively collecting data about possible locations, where bodies of the missing persons were buried. He says that the Association is helping more than 500 families, which have filed suits with the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.
 
“Our Association is the holder of a project aimed at establishing a network of support to the State Court for the north-western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have already provided services like transportation and psychological support to several tens of witnesses, who testified at war crime trials before courts in Banja Luka, Bihac and Sarajevo, and established a telephone line for offering information about processing war crimes,” Ramulic said.
 
According to Ramulic, over the past few years the “Izvor” Association has developed its capacities in order to be able to provide psycho-therapeutic support to persons suffering from war traumas, while coming to terms with the past represents one of the most important goals of this Association.  
 
“Close co-operation with experts and local centres for mental support has been established. We are also organising therapeutic groups for members of the Association and beneficiaries of its projects. Since last year we have been developing a project entitled, ‘Video archive of crimes against humanity in Prijedor’. In this way we are directly building capacities for a healthy culture of remembrance based on facts and testimonies by survivors,” Ramulic said.