Former prisoners at the wartime Keraterm detention camp and families of inmates who died gathered in Prijedor to mark the anniversary of the killings of around 200 inmates by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992.
The state court upheld the acquittal of Djordje Ristanic, head of the Serb wartime leadership in Brcko in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, clearing him of involvement in persecuting Bosniaks and Croats in 1992.
Thirty-one years after a wartime campaign of persecution against non-Serbs began in Bosnia’s Prijedor area, survivors and their families commemorated the victims and urged the authorities to finally allow a memorial to be built.
Former soldiers Senad Gadzo, Zaim Lalicic and Suljo Hebib were acquitted of wartime crimes including the violent abuse and murder of Serb civilian prisoners in Hrasnica near Sarajevo.
Bosnia’s state court confirmed the indictment of five former guards at the Trnopolje, Keraterm and Omarska wartime detention camps on charges that include torture, murder and allowing the rape of inmates.
Husein Mujanovic’s sentence for abusing Serb civilian prisoners held in inhumane conditions in a Bosnian Army military prison in Hrasnica near Sarajevo in 1992 was reduced to four-and-a-half years on appeal.
The Serbian judiciary has taken over the prosecution of Milorad Kotur, who is accused of involvement in killing over 50 Bosniaks and Croats, and Lazar Mutlak, who is charged with raping and sexually abusing a Bosniak woman.
The Bosnian prosecution charged 15 former guards with crimes against civilians and prisoners of war who were detained at the Military-Investigative Prison in Banja Luka, known as Mali Logor, from 1992 to 1995.
Six former guards were charged with committing a crime against humanity against illegally-detained prisoners at the Trnopolje, Keraterm and Omarska camps in the Prijedor area during wartime.
Former reservist policeman Goran Govedarica was sentenced to one year in prison for committing a war crime by assaulting a prisoner in the town of Gacko, but was acquitted of murdering another detainee.