Court Hears of Keraterm Killings
Former officer in the ex-Yugoslav state security service says he spoke to prisoners about detention centre atrocity.
Court Hears of Keraterm Killings
Former officer in the ex-Yugoslav state security service says he spoke to prisoners about detention centre atrocity.
The trial of senior Bosnian Serb police officials Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin heard last week of events surrounding the mass killing of more than 150 non-Serb detainees in the Keraterm prison camp in 1992.
Prosecution witness Radomir Rodic, a Bosnian Serb from the north-western town of Prijedor and a former officer in the ex-Yugoslav state security service, SDB, gave testimony on the time he had spent as an interrogator at the camp.
Zupljanin - the former head of the regional security services centre in Banja Luka and adviser to Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, who is on trial for genocide - is accused of the extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in north-western Bosnia between April and December, 1992.
Stanisic, a former minister of the Bosnian Serb ministry of internal affairs, MUP, is charged with murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates.
Stanisic and Zupljanin are alleged to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at the permanent removal of non-Serbs from the territory of an intended Serbian state. They are accused of crimes committed between April 1 and December 31, 1992, in 20 municipalities throughout Bosnia, including Prijedor.
Their alleged crimes include persecution, extermination, murder, torture, inhumane acts and deportation as crimes against humanity, in addition to murder, torture and cruel treatment as violations of the laws or customs of war.
Rodic said that between May and August 1992 he had visited the Keraterm camp, near Prijedor, on a daily basis to question non-Serb prisoners about their “involvement in armed rebellion against the Serbs”.
The indictment against Stanisic and Zupljanin enumerates more than 50 different detention facilities, including Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, set up by Bosnian Serb forces where non-Serb captives were beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, humiliated, harassed and psychologically abused.
“In May 1992, I started working in this investigation centre or camp, whatever you may wish to call it,” said Rodic.
“We interrogated the prisoners by questioning one by one for as long as we could in those conditions.”
Asked by prosecutor Matthew Olmsted whether the questioning was carried out in teams, he answered that there were three teams of two men each. Alongside a pair of officers from the police, there were two regular and two reserve officers from the SDB.
Rodic identified Ranko Vucula and Brane Siljak as members of the first team; Grozdan Mutic and Kostimir Modic as members of the second; and Marko Radisic and himself as members of the third. The witness added that “a member of military police was always present during examination”.
Shortly after the camp was formed, according to the witness, older men and minors were freed along with people who had no grounds for further detention. Some days later, however, Rodic said he started seeing some of the released inside the camp again.
According to him, it was clear that these inmates lacked basic sanitary conditions and sufficient food, and that they were sleeping on bare wooden floors.
“I had not personally entered those rooms, but it seemed to me that they were fed two meals a day and that they didn’t have adequate conditions of hygiene,” he explained.
The witness also said that he heard that Zupljanin had once visited the camp.
“I remember that once there was a delegation which came to visit Keraterm. I can’t precisely say who it consisted of, but I think I remember one of the guards telling me that it was Mr Zupljanin,” he said, adding that he had not personally seen him.
“When was that, approximately?” asked Olmsted. The witness answered, “Perhaps around halfway into the camp's existence.”
The prosecutor asked Rodic whether he remembered “an incident in late July when a large number of prisoners were killed in one of the rooms at Keraterm”.
“I do,” replied the witness.
Stanisic and Zupljanin are charged with the killing of a number of men in Room Three at the Keraterm camp on or about July 24 and 25, 1992.
When asked how he found out about the incident, the witness answered, “In the morning, while leaving for work, we would gather around the MUP building every day and then take one or two cars to the camp. It was then [on July 25] that one of the guards standing there told me that there had been an incident at Keraterm and there were dead people.
“What was immediately noticeable was increased security for the camp. Further, when we came closer to the entrance, I could notice two or three corpses lying in the part of the yard [at Keraterm] which I could see.
“We stayed not more than an hour at Keraterm. We had to leave, because our conditions for working had not been met,” he continued, adding that they only returned three days later and that there were no sign of the dead, “not even the two or three bodies from the yard”. The number of policemen also seemed back to normal, added Rodic.
He said he was never ordered to investigate the events or write a report about them, emphasising that the SDB did not inquire into the incident in Room Three.
“This was within the jurisdiction of the normal public security organs,” he said. However, he spoke about it to the prisoners he was questioning.
“We asked the people trying to find out what happened. The statements were different: some had seen nothing, some heard a noise, some heard shots and others even saw some smoke,” he said.
The prosecutor asked Rodic whether he had found out how many people were killed.
“Initially there were calculations from several dozen to several hundred,” answered Rodic. “Later me and my colleagues were informed that the number was 150 or 170 people.”
“How much time afterwards was it that the camp was closed?” asked the prosecutor.
“Just over a month after that event, if I remember the dates correctly,” replied the witness.
Stanisic surrendered in March 2005, while Zupljanin was arrested by the Serbian authorities on June 10, 2008, after 13 years as a fugitive. Their indictments were joined together in September 2008 and both have pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The trial continues this week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sarajevo.
