The Prijedor opstina, or administrative district, includes at least seventy-one smaller towns and villages. The names of some are now familiar due to the atrocities which took place there; among them are Kozarac, Omarska, and Trnopolje. While the towns and villages within the wider prijedor district have their own officials, they are governed by the opstina. Thus, the Prijedor authorities wield influence over a considerable area. Prijedor was considered strategically important town by Bosnian Serbs, who wanted to create a corridor between Serbia proper and the Croatian Krajina, which was until 1995 controlled by rebel Serbs in Croatia. as early as 1991, the sebs organized a Serb-only alternative administration in orstina Prijedor, under the guidance of a central administration in Banja Luka. The designated Serb "mayor" was Milomir Stakic, a medical doctor who functioned as deputy mayor under the duly elected Bosniak mayor of the town, Muhamed Cehajic.
After the Serbs took power on April 30, 1992, they opened at least four detention camps in the Prijedor opstina. Two of the concentartion camps, Omarska and Keraterm, were places where killings, torture, and brutal interogations were carried out. The third, Trnopolje, had another purpose; it functioned as a staging area for massive deportations of mostly women, children, and elderly men, and killing and rapes also occured there. The fourth, Manjaca, was reffered to by the Bosnian Serbs as a "prisoner of war camp", although most if not all detainees were civilians.
"Despite the absence of real non-Serbian threat, the main objective of the concentration camps, especillay Omarska but also Keraterm, seems to have been to eliminate the non-Serbian leadership," the U.N. Commission of Experts found. "From the time when the Serbs took power in the district opf Prijedor, non-Serbs in reality became outlaws. At times, non-Serbs were instructed to wear white arm abnds to identify themselves...according to Serbian regulations, those leaving the district had to sign over their property rights and accept never to return, being told their names would simultaneously be deleted from the census."
According to Ed Vulliamy, the first journalist to report from the Omarska camp, "Omarska was a monstrosity: an inferno of murder, torture and rape. It was a stain upon our century."
During the period when many persons were interned in the concentration camps, family members sometimes tried to obtain information from the police station in town. "Instead of receiving nformation concerning the whereabouts of their family members, they were in some cases offered the alternative of paying for an "exit visa" for the family at large. In order to receive an "exit visa", sums of money had to be paid to various municipal authorities and to the local "red Cross", run by the Bosnian Serb authorities, and real property had to be signed over to the municipality.
The Commission of Experts determined that the systematic destruction of the Bosniak community in the Prijedor area met the definition of Genocide.
The persecution of non-serbs in Prijedor did not ease after international pressure succeeded in forcing the Bosnian Serbs to close the concentration camps in 1992, as evidenced by the ICRC's attempt to evacuate all remaining non-Serbs from Opstina Prijedor in March 1994.
As documented by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, a final wave of mass expulsions of non-Serbs from Prijedor and many other towns in Serb-controlled territory occured in September and October 1995, when the infamous Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic joined local forces to conduct "ethnic cleansing" operations. Forced expulsions in Prijedor began on October 5 during which those expelled were again forced to finance their own "ethnic cleansing" by paying transportation fees to the local "Red Cross" and were harassed, robbed, and threatened while waiting for the buses which would later dump them at the confrontation line.
One woman told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki during a 1995 investigation of the expulsions, "All the Muslims from the city [Prijedor] were expelled. We went to the [local] Red Cross, gave them seventy DM for each family member and got on the buses...There were thirteen buses in the convoy leaving from Prijedor and Teslic. Men were taken off my bus...My husband was taken off the bus in Blatnica, a Serbian village in the woods." She had not seen her husband since.
Many draft-age males were separated from their families during round-ups in other Bosnian Serb-controlled areas, and transferred to Prijedor, where they were interned at the "Autoprevoz" facility or pther locxal detention centers. Following the officil closing of the camps in 1992, and until the present, rumors have abounded about the reopening of the Omarska, Manjaca, and Keraterm camps, but Human Rights Watch/helsinki was unable to confirm them. prisoners released from "AUtoprevoz" in an exchange told the Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that when the International Comittee of the Red Cross tried to visit them, they were moved by bus onto the Kozara mountain and hidden until the visitors had gone awy.
Oppression of the now minority Bosniak and Bosnian Croat populations throuout Republica Srpska continues today through restrictions on freedom of movement; evictions and expulsions; arbitrary arrest and detention; ethnicxally motivated harassement and direct physical attack; denial of employement, humanitarian assistence, medical care, and socil insurance; discrimination in acces to education; and restrictions on religious freedom.
THE ROLE OF THE PRIJEDOR AUTHORITIES DURING THE WAR AND AFTER THE SIGNING OF THE DAYTON PEACE AGREEMENT
The "Crisis Committee" and Co-Conspirators
In 1992, the "Crisis Committee of the serbian District of Prijedor" (Krizni Stab Srpske Opstine Prijedor) was established to organize the takeover of the town by Serbs and to eliminate the non-Serb popuilation through a systematic "ethnic cleansing" campaign coordinated with Serbian and Bosnian Serb army and paramilitary units. The goal of the "Crisis Committee" was to establish complete Serb control over the Prijedor opstina, to arm Serbs within that area, to block communications of non-Serbs, to destroy multi-ethnic relations in all sectors of the community through the use of propaganda (to instill the local Serb population with the fear that they were under threat from non-Serbs), to provide logistical support and production for the army through the atkeover of industry and production units, and to conduct the organized and meticulous larceny of funds from non-Serbs through control of the bank, appropriation of property, and burglary.
Crisis comittees were formed in a number of towns and villages i Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to facilitate the takeover by Serb forces and authorities. The "Crisis Committee" in Prijedor, aided by many othrs, targeted non-Serb community leaders and bussiness owners, many of whom were summarily executed or intimidately rounded up and imprisoned in concentration camps, particularly in Omarska camp. During the preiod when such committees were being set up in various towns in 1992, the Prijedor Bosnian Serb authorities secretly began developing nine new police stations. In early April 1992, Serb police officers in Croatia amd Bosnia and Herzegovina simultaneously left the established police forces to form their own police. Simo Drljaca headed the secret effort in Opstina Prijedor to create such a force. The local Prijedor police, according to numerous witness accounts and independent investigations, played a mojor role in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during and after the war. Local police were often involved in para military-type activities, suh as armed attacks on civilians in and around Prijedor, and in interogations and torturw in the concentration camps.
A number of current officials in Prijedor were members of the Crisis Committee, including the recently-ousted but still powerful police chief Simo Drljaca; current Mayor Milomir Stakic; the president of the local (self-designated) Serbian Red Cross, Srdjo Srdic; and Prijedor Hospital Director Milan ("Mico") Kovacevic (previously) president of the Prijedor Executive Committee, or city council). According to the U.N. Commission of Experts, Slobodan Kuruzovic, now director of a local nespaper, was an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army, a key military figure on the "Crisis Committee" and the commander of the Trnopolje concentration camp.
Other alleged abettors in the "ethnic cleansing" include Deputy Mayor Momcilo Radanovic (nom de guerre "Cigo"), who has been accused of atrocities in Kozarac and in the concentration camps; Marko Pavic, director of the PTT (Post Office, Telegraph and Telephone); and Milenko Vukic, director of the electric company.
Several police officials and numerous police officers have been accused of participation in war crimes. The civil, secret, and military police provided the camps with guards and interrogators. Joint police and miliotary "intervention units" were used to trace and capture the non-Serb leadership. These units participated in mass killings.
According to the Commission of Exp[erts, "members of the 'Crisis Committee' ran the community in which all these violations occurred. They participated in administrative decision-making. The gains opf the systematic looting of non-Serbian property were shared by many Serbs on different levels."
A local resident of prijedor recently told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that the "Crisis Committee" "got rich during the war through theft and looting of those killed, and through bribery [i.e. freedom offered for cash]. They alsos tole businesses of those killed. That is how they got dsome of the bussinesses they now have in Prijedor. Othres took that money and opened bussinesses and companies. Only those with connections to these guys can have bussines because that is the only way to be sure you are protected." Those without connections or those who refuse to pay protection money run the risk of having their bussiness destroyeds or worse.
A survivor of Keraterm and Trnopolje told Jadranka Cigelj in November 1992:
I blame the following for atrocities that were committed: 1. The entire county authorities -- [includin] president of the county Milomir Stakic, medic by profession; 2. The local police forces -- chief of staff Simo Drljaca, a lawyer, and head commander Zivko Jovic; 3. Simo Miskovic, leader of the Serbian democratic party, a policema from the communist era, now retired and successor to Srdjo Srdic, now president of the Prijedor Red Cross; 4. An army representative, Colonel Arsic...who was in charge of the brigade which destroyed Pakrac and other Slavonian and Banian towns and villages, he particpated in the events annd gave orders; he and Major Radmilo Zeljaja practically controled all the evnts until now, therefopre, the destroyed town of Kozarac is now called Radmilovo in honor of Major Zeljaja."
Another survivor of Keraterm also mentiones the names of some of those responsible for "etnic cleansing":
I have not [yet] described here the horrible sufferings of famished , sick and beaten people, who died in the worst pain imaginable,