Serbia Blocks Payment to Bosnian Torture Victims

Two detainees tortured at the Sljivovica wartime detention camp in Serbia have not received the compensation awarded to them because Belgrade’s public attorney’s office has demanded the case be reviewed.

Enes Bogilovic and Musan Dzebo have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and general physical disability since they were imprisoned by Serbian interior ministry officers at the Sljivovica camp after they fled Bosnia in 1995.

Both have testified how they were beaten and abused in captivity alongside hundreds of other Bosniaks who escaped the advance of the Bosnian Serb Army at the same time, only to be locked up and mistreated in jail camps in Serbia.

But despite the fact that the appeals court in Belgrade awarded the two men 2,750 euro each last summer as compensation for their suffering, they haven’t received the money because Serbia’s Public Attorney’s Office has asked for a case review.

The Public Attorney’s Office hasn’t made public the reasons for asking for a review of their case, but the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre (FHP), which is representing them, says it cannot send the final verdict to the interior ministry to get the compensation until it is complete.

“In order to avoid the risk that detainees will have to return the sums awarded to them, the FHP decided that until the end of the review procedure, we will not initiate the enforcement procedure [for getting the compensation],” said Petar Zmak, the FHP’s project coordinator for reparations.

As well as Bogilovic and Dzebo, the FHP is representing 15 other Bosnian detainees who were held at the interior ministry’s Sljivovica and Mitrovo Polje detention camps who are also seeking compensation from Serbia for their time in captivity.

The first basic court and the appeals court in Belgrade have however rejected the majority of the compensation requests on the grounds that the men’s lawsuits were filed seven years ago and have passed the statute of limitations. Zmak said he expected final decisions on the outstanding cases within two years.

Beatings with batons
After the Bosnian Serb Army captured the UN-protected enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa in July 1995, over 800 local men fled to Serbia in fear of reprisals.

After crossing the River Drina, they were arrested and detained in camps near the border at Sljivovica and Mitrovo Polje, where they were guarded and abused by Serbian interior ministry officers.

The detainees were beaten with batons, planks of wood, electric cables and other makeshift weapons. They were also humiliated on a daily basis, and some of them were sexually abused. Several detainees did not survive the mistreatment.

Bogilovic also said that one police officer put out a cigarette on the right side of his chest in front of more than 100 people.

The detainees testified how they had to sleep on a concrete floor, were given bad quality food, and that during the first month after they arrived, they were not allowed to take a bath.

Dzebo was released from the detention camp in early December 1995 and Bogilovic two months later, but the abuse left them with serious health problems.

According to an expert opinion from neuropsychiatrist Zoran Djuric, Dzebo and Bogilovic lost 15 per cent of their general physical ability due to chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and permanent personality changes.

“They got PTSD, a mental illness which occurred as a result of physical and mental abuse,” Djuric said in his report for the court.

Bogilovic and Dzebo asked for around 21,200 euro from Serbia in compensation for their physical and mental abuse, and the fear they experienced in the Sljivovica camp. They were awarded around 2,750 euro each instead.

According to the court, the detainees should have submitted their claims for physical torture, fear and violation of their rights no later than 2000. Because they only asked for compensation in 2007, the court concluded that it had passed the statute of limitations, rejecting their legal team’s argument that the statute of limitations does not apply in such cases.

Only the part of their claim relating to physical impairments caused by mental suffering was accepted.

Enduring nightmares
Another detainee, Halid Durmisevic, was not awarded compensation by the Serbian court even though it was accepted that he was suffering from PTSD and that his general physical ability had deteriorated by 30 per cent. The reason given, again, was the statute of limitations.

His PTSD was confirmed in a doctor’s report in 2003, but the court ruled that he could not get compensation because he only filed his lawsuit four years later.

Two further detainees, Senad Jusufbegovic and Mujo Vatres, filed lawsuits together with Durmisevic in 2007. Vatres was awarded nearly 4,100 euro because his mental illness was medically certified in 2005.

During the case, Vatres said that Serbian police officers “kicked me in the back sometimes 30 times a day and aimed a gun at me”. He said that he still had psychological problems, including anxiety, nightmares and sleep disorders. His general physical ability was reduced by about 50 per cent.

Jusfubegovic’s claim for compensation was rejected however because the court concluded that he did not suffer from PTSD, even though he was diagnosed with the condition by a hospital in Sarajevo in 2007.

Neuropsychiatrist Snezana Kuzmanovic, who gave an expert opinion on Jusufbegovic to the court, said that he “has no signs of permanent diminishment of general physical abilities”.

But Jusufbegovic, who was 17 years old when he was detained for over eight months in the Sljivovica and Mitrovo Polje camps, said that the neuropsychiatrist had misjudged the impact of his suffering.

“She claimed that after I left the detention camp, I finished high school, graduated from college, got a job and started a family and so I did not have diminished physical abilities, since somehow I managed to live a normal life,” he said.

The Durmisevic, Vatres and Jusufbegovic case is currently on appeal.

No one from the Serbian interior ministry has been put on trial for the crimes committed in the detention camps in Serbia.