Milan "Mico" Kovacevic, an original member of the "Crisis Committee," now serves as director of the Prijedor Hospital. In his book Seasons in Hell, Ed Vulliamy stated:
Milan Kovacevic, the big, impervious and haunted deputy mayor of the now Serbian-controlled town of Prijedor...[is] the man responsible for the delivery of Muslim prisoners to the Omarska concentration camp..."We must understand," he says, "that wherever there are Serbs, there is Serbia, and that Serbs cannot be `free from persecution' until Kalabic's and Moljevic's frontiers are secure from all the enemies of the Serbian narod [people or nation]". . .Kovacevic was born in a Croatian concentration camp during the Second World War. Outside the window of his office, Muslim women are queuing at the police station for news of their menfolk, whom they have not seen since they were taken away to Kovacevic's camps two months ago.
Later, Kovacevic tells Vulliamy, "What you will find here are not concentration camps, but transit centres. We are a people born out of concentration camps, determined to protect our nation from genocide again." He then said, "I understand your priorities, but I do not have the authority to allow you to go to Omarska." This, after Vulliamy had been informed by Colonel Vladimir Arsic and Major Milutinovic of the local Bosnian Serb command that the camp was run by civilian authorities. Roy Gutman, journalist for Newsday, also interviewed Kovacevic on October 18, 1992. "Milan Kovacevic, the city manager in Prijedor, said Omarska was an investigative facility, set up `to see who did what during the war, to find the guilty ones and to establish the innocent so that they didn't bear the consequences.' He said the camp was closed when the investigation was completed." Gutman's book contains a photo of Kovacevic in a U.S. Marines t-shirt, sitting with Drljaca at the time.
In the aforementioned February 1996 article for The Guardian, Ed Vulliamy speaks of Kovacevic:
The man responsible for the day-to-day administration of Camp Omarska was Dr. Milan Kovacevic, and anaesthetist by profession. He was a bear of a man with a pale moustache and he told us there was nothing the world could teach the Serbs about concentration camps, since he had been born in one....After our discovery of Omarska, when the media circus descended on Prijedor and the camp was hurriedly closed, Dr. Kovacevic was assigned the task of explaining to the world's cameras what a "collection centre" was.... Dr. Kovacevic, it turns out, is now director of Prijedor Hospital. He remains a proud nationalist. `The facts showed it necessary to destroy Bosnia. I wanted to make this Serb land. Without Muslims, yes. We cannot live together. I still hold that view.'
According to a reliable local source, the majority of aid to the Prijedor Hospital is siphoned off by Kovacevic and Mayor Stakic. Kovacevic recently accepted a donation of 350,000 DM from UNHCR for the hospital in Prijedor, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki was told in November by an U.N. Civil Affairs officer, who showed Human Rights Watch/Helsinki a news item which stated that the money was for the renovation of part of the hospital for use as a geriatric center. A confidential source with direct knowledge of hospital affairs told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that the fuel, clothing, and medication given to the Prijedor hospital by the U.N. or IFOR/SFOR is taken by Kovacevic and Mayor Stakic. According to the source, fuel designated for the hospital is sold in gas stations in Prijedor and the other items are given to the Bosnian Serb Army or are sold on the black market. Non-Serbs are afraid to use the hospital, because they are fearful they will not receive good treatment and also because treatment for those without medical insurance is prohibitively expensive. Most non-Serbs do not have medical insurance, having been disenfranchised after the takeover.
Milan Kovacevic, according to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki sources, had meetings in 1992 with the military and civilian police and SDS leaders about what to do about the non-Serb staff of the hospital. The heads of the hospital departments reportedly still work very closely with the SDS.
According to Physicians for Human Rights and the U.N. Commission of Experts, during the war, a number of doctors "disappeared" and are believed to have been killed in Omarska, among them the following persons: Osman Mahmuljan, internist; Enes Begic, surgeon; Zeljko Sikora, gynecologist; and Razim Music, neuropsychiatrist (he may have survived, according to a Human Rights Watch/Helsinki source). The director of the hospital during the time of the "disappearances" was Radojka Elenko, who still works as an internist at the hospital. According to a report by Physicians for Human Rights, "By May 1992, most non-Serb with white-collar jobs, including physicians, had been removed from their posts [in Prijedor]. . When Bosnian Serb forces captured the town of Prijedor, they took special care to detain "all the prominent people of Prijedor," as one former resident of the town told PHR. This included health professionals, such as internist Osman Mahmuljan, gynecologist Zeljko Sikora, and ear-nose-and threat specialist Esad Sadikovic."
According to reports, during the war, the heads of the hospital were working in collaboration with the army and the police. Police and military came into the hospital, made a list of all the staff of the hospital, and used that list to take people away from the hospital. They took some people away from the hospital directly, and others from their homes."
Roy Gutman of Newsday reported: "The [non-Serb] mayor was deported to the notorious Omarska camp, while his wife, a physician and medical director of the Prijedor hospital, was told not to report to work. On May 28, 1992, all hospital personnel were stopped on their way to work and divided into groups based on presumed ethnicity. Only Serbs were allowed into the hospital, while non-Serbs were either returned home or deported to concentration camps."