Vukovar 1991 and HLC on Prisoner Camps in Serbia

27 May 2008

Zoran �angut, President of Vukovar 1991 Associatio, and Sandra Orlović, deputy Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, filed a criminal lawsuit against 54 named commanding officers and guards in prisoner camps in Serbia to the office of Vladimir Vukčević, Was Crimes Prosecutor of Serbia.

Criminal charges filed against guards at prison camps in Serbia.

After Serb control was established in Eastern Slavonia, more than 7,000 Croatian civilians, wounded and captured soldiers, were held and abused in humiliating and inhuman conditions in the prison in Sremska Mitrovica, the Military Penitentiary in Ni�u, the Military Investigation Prison in Belgrade and the camps in Begerci and Stajićevo.

Nata�a Kandić from HLC says that, together with Vukovar 1991, they aim to present the facts of camps in Serbia to the public and to take those responsible for crimes against humanity and serious human rights violations to justice.

-The existence of camps is denied in Serbia by those who created them, while current Government maintains its silence on the issue. On the opposite side are the victims who bore witness to torture, murders and inhuman conditions in those facilities, says Kandić.

After the talks with Vukčević and his deputy Veselin Mrdak, �angut believes that there are people in Serbia and Croatia who want to process all war crimes cases, regardless of the nationality of perpetrators. He believes that it is important to know, also, that there were guards who helped the prisoners and didn`t engage in the abuses, in spite of being encouraged to do so.

Stanko Zadro, former prisoner at Stajićevo, noted the case of Aleksanda Jeftić, Serb defender of Vukovar, who was also imprisoned, but with the help of a commanding officer he knew there, managed to help save over 150 prisoners.

Sandra Orlović, leader of the process to document the existence of prisoner camps in Serbia, said that she found it difficult to face the fact that there were children and elderly imprisoned there to, noting several examples of torture and abuse of women, children and elderly people.

According to the data available to HLC, the camps were established by the former JNA, on order of the Military Intelligence Service (KOS). The prisoners were exposed to torture and inhuman treatment, and the fate of many of them remains unknown to this day.