War Crimes Suspect Insists He Was a Victim Too

A Serb war crimes suspect insisted this week he had been forced to run a notorious detention camp, saying his family would have been at risk had he not.



Zeljko Mejakic is charged with committing crimes against humanity, murders, beatings and sexual harassment in the Omarska camp in 1992. Prosecutors say he was the de facto camp commander, and had complete control over the lives of all 3,000 detainees.



But this week he told a Bosnian court he had been powerless to stop the torture, rape and murders that were taking place in the camp.

“I have not killed anyone, nor did I hurt anyone at that time,” he said.



He said he had been terrified of his commanding officer Simo Drljaca, head of the Prijedor police, who was killed when resisting arrest by international forces in July 1997.



“I didn’t agree with what was happening in the camps. However, I could not just walk away or quit. I would have put my family’s life on the line. It was a great betrayal at that time. Everybody feared Simo Drljaca. My family and I would have just disappeared if I had crossed him, many did,” he stated.



Mejakic himself surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, after a warrant for his arrest was issued. The ICTY in July 2005 passed his case to the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber. He said he had surrendered because he had been a victim, too.



“My reasons go back to 1992, because I have waited since then to tell everyone what I went through. I have said it before in The Hague: I want the truth to be found, and justice for everyone,” he said.



He explained that as chief of security he had no power or jurisdiction over “the conditions of the camp, food supplies for detainees, or the torture they went through”. Police officers were in charge only of “holding the detainees in the camp, and protecting them from outside intruders”.



During cross-examination by prosecutor Peter Kidd, Mejakic was shown a map of the camp site, on which he pointed out locations where detainees were questioned by military investigators.



“I heard yelling, moans and screams from those rooms, it bothered me and my co-workers a lot, but we (the police) could do nothing. The inspectors were in charge of everything. They gave us orders,” he said, adding that he could not have opposed them without violence.



“There were several groups that came to the camp and tortured prisoners. We did have weapons, and we would threaten individual soldiers that came to torture, but when it was a group it was very difficult. It was a huge risk to take in those crazy times. They had the authorities behind them, and I believe to this day if we would have shot at them you would not have any witnesses or defendants alive in this case,” explained Mejakic.



During the cross-examination, Mejakic again spoke about the “appalling and horrible” conditions at the camp.



“In one of the areas where detainees were kept called the Hangar, the water and sanitary systems were in such bad shape that the smell was overwhelming, and could be felt throughout the building. Also, the detainees were thin, dirty and [living in] overcrowded [conditions],” he admitted.



Mejakic was also asked about women in the camps and cases of sexual assaults on them by guards.



Prosecution witnesses K035 and K040 spoke about rapes in the camp, and Mejakic confirmed he heard “about those cases from the witnesses, but was powerless to do anything except to write to Simo Drljaca, who not only refused to do anything about it but also ordered me to hide the fact that women were in the camp”.



Kidd produced two documents, one of which contained Mejakic’s signature as commander of the military police in Omarska. The other was from Drljaca and confirmed that Mejakic headed the military police there from April 1992 to July 1993.



Mejakic denied that he held that position, and stated “there wasn’t even a military police station in Omarska, we were just a division of the Prijedor police”.



The defendant was also examined at length about his co-accused. Momcilo Gruban and Dusan Fustar are charged with heading the guard shifts at Omarska, while Dusan Knezevic allegedly held no position at the camp but went in freely and harassed detainees.



“There were no shift commanders, or shift chiefs. I have never heard of that position, neither from the detainees nor from the other guards,” said Mejakic, adding that he knew Gruban well before the war and that he was very pleased with his work at the camp, and “never saw him harass a detainee”. He added that he had never heard of Knezevic.



After the completion of Mejakic’s cross examination, the defence called two witnesses: Rajko Marmat and Milorad Stupar.



Marmat, a reserve police officer who also worked on security detail at the Omarska camp, said the police had not been involved in the torture and abuse at the camp.



“There were military forces present that could command everyone and who questioned the detainees,” he said.



His testimony was followed by that of Stupar, Mejakic’s former school teacher and a member of the Territorial Guard, a unit of the armed forces. He said Mejakic was a “brilliant student and a good man”.



He recalled the opening of the camp, when he saw “a line of buses carrying civilians to the Omarska mine site. After a day or two I was told to go as part of the Territorial Guard and protect the second rim of the camp”.



Stupar claimed he saw many of his former co-workers and friends in the camp, and tried to “bring them food and supplies, because they looked horrible”.



He also testified about talking to Drljaca about closing the camp. “Already then I knew how it was going to end. How today the world will remember Omarska as maybe even worse then Jasenovac,” he said, referring to the largest World War Two concentration camp in the Balkans.



At the end, Stupar claimed he had talked to Mejakic about helping the detainees, but he “saw that Mejakic was not in charge and couldn’t do a lot”.



The trial will continue on February 18.



Denis Dzidic is an IWPR reporter in Sarajevo.