Vukovar 1991 and HLC on Prisoner Camps in Serbia
Zoran Šangut, 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.
Nataša 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, Šangut 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. |
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