Mejakic et al: Horror of Prijedor camps

The trial of Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban, Dusan Fustar and Dusko Knezevic began when the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina read the indictment and gave its opening argument.

Defence attorneys announced that they will give their opening statements during presentation of evidence.

Prosecutor Peter Kid quoted one of Omarska’s female detainees at the beginning of his opening statement. “We, the women, started each of our days by counting bodies on the lawn in front of the white house. We would usually count 15 or 20 bodies. One day we counted 24; that was the highest number. Then a yellow truck would come onto which the bodies were loaded as if they were pieces of wood”, he read. 

This witness, who will testify before the court, was detained and physically and psychologically abused in Omarska detention camp during 1992.

According to the indictment, during 1992 Mejakic, Gruban, Fustar and Knezevic took part in beatings, rapes, murders and tortures of detainees in Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps.

As the prosecutor said, in 1992″horrifying and shameful crimes” took place in Omarska, Keraterm andTrnopolje, where detainees were humiliated only because they “were not ofSerb nationality”.

Omarska and Keraterm were formed at the end of May 1992 and closed after a visit by foreign journalists in August 1992. Some of the detainees were transferred to the nearby Trnopolje camp, others to Manjaca.

In the opening statement, Kid said that the conditions in the camps were “cruel and degrading” and that the detainees did not die “of old age or illness”.

“The base of Omarska and Keraterm camps were violent and oppressing regimes,” Kid noted.

The prosecutor announced that he will prove through witness testimony that Mejakic had “enormous authority”as commander of Omarska camp, where Gruban served as commander of the guard shift.

Fustar was one of the three commanders of guard in Keraterm camp, while, according to witnesses’ testimonies, Knezevic came to the camps and participated in the physical and psychological abuse of camp inmates. 

The prosecutor announced the appearance of multiple witnesses, mostly former camp inmates, and four witnesses who were not detained but will describe the events that took place in Prijedor during 1992.

On May 9, 2006 all four indictees were transferred from the detention unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague to Sarajevo, as part of the former’s exit strategy.

The first witnesses will appear before the court on January 16, 2007.