COURT AND PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE OF BiH CONTINUE STORY OF VIKTOR BUBANJ CAMP

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, SEPTEMBER 26 /SRNA/ – A member of the family of those killed and a former camp inmate, Brano Vučetić, told SRNA that he is ready to do everything so that the Prosecutor’s Office and the Court of BiH are relocated from the site of the former notorious Muslim camp for Serbs 'Viktor Bubanj' in Sarajevo, thereby preventing the continued insult of Serb victims and their families.

Vučetić, who as a wounded nine-year-old was imprisoned in the Muslim camp in Srebrenica, said that he considers the initiative of the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska completely justified, since it is devastating that the Prosecutor’s Office and Court of BiH—institutions that have done nothing for former camp inmates and families of murdered Serbs to receive justice—are located in the building of a former camp.

“As someone who himself was in a camp in Srebrenica, I am aware of what the inmates imprisoned in the notorious ‘Viktor Bubanj’ went through. In the war my entire family was killed. No one has yet been held accountable for the deaths of my family or my imprisonment. I cannot remain indifferent and bury my head in the sand at what I see,” Vučetić emphasized.

He said that it is clear to him that those who conceived and carried out all this are mocking the former inmates and families of murdered Serbs.

DECISIONS FOR SERBS’ PRISONS MADE FROM 'VIKTOR BUBANJ'

“In the building where Serbs were tortured, the Court and Prosecutor’s Office have been established, which to this day continue to imprison and torment exclusively Serbs. I ask whether they feel shame and whether they fear God? When do they plan to look me in the eyes and say that someone must answer for the deaths of my mother, brother and father, that someone must answer for my physical wounds, but also those still open in my heart?” Vučetić asked.

He also asked who will answer for the fact that his childhood was taken from him.

“They want to take this away from my children today, as well as from all children who were left without parents. As a member of the Association of Camp Inmates, I am ready to focus all my strength so that this initiative is realized, thereby preventing the continued insult to us, the families of the killed and the inmates, because unfortunately I belong to all those categories,” Vučetić stressed.

LOCATION OF THE COURT AND PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE MEANT TO COVER UP ALL CRIMES

The President of the Municipal Organization of Families of Captured and Fallen Fighters and Missing Civilians of Srebrenica, Branimir Kojić, told SRNA that this organization fully supports the initiative of the Association of Camp Inmates and that its members are ready to join them in the struggle for that building to become a place where Serbs will gather and properly mark the site of Serb suffering, torture and pain.

“Only the naive can believe this is a coincidence, because the Western schemers very deliberately wanted to cover up the story of the camps for Serbs in what they call occupied Sarajevo,” Kojić assessed.

He noted that Westerners made sure that all those who were imprisoned in 'Viktor Bubanj,' but also in 'Silos' and other camps, were sent to different parts of the world so that there would be as few testimonies as possible about the atrocities which only a few survived by sheer luck.

Kojić said that Australia, Canada and the USA were only some of the destinations where Serbs tortured by their former Muslim neighbors were resettled, and emphasized that more and more of the displaced are returning to their homeland, among them those who are speaking louder about the horrors they endured.

“If a man who before the war used to read the newspaper Ekspres is captured by his neighbors and held in one of Sarajevo’s camps for 1,355 days because, as they said, by reading backwards they concluded that he was reading ‘Serbian’ papers, this clearly shows that Sarajevo was occupied—but exclusively for Serbs,” Kojić stressed.

He said that during the war hundreds of Serb inmates perished in the dungeon of 'Viktor Bubanj,' while in the post-war period in the same building sentences are still passed primarily against Serbs, as well as their families who continue to experience trauma equal to the torture of the camp itself.

WAR STILL CONTINUES FROM 'VIKTOR BUBANJ'

“I have always said that the Court and Prosecutor’s Office of BiH are a sniper’s nest from which it is easiest to shoot at Serbs and Republika Srpska, and this is confirmed every day. What happens there is nothing but a continuation of the war, except now guns are not fired—instead Serbs are killed with verdicts against them, while those who killed Serb innocents, even those who during the war were masters of life and death in that building, are acquitted,” Kojić emphasized.

He recalled that on several occasions the families of captured and fallen Serb fighters and missing civilians organized protests to express dissatisfaction with the work of the Court and Prosecutor’s Office of BiH in prosecuting war crimes against Serbs, but also because this institution of injustice is located in the walls of Serb suffering, pain and agony.

“That building is still nothing but a camp for Serbs. Few of the accused Serbs have managed to prove their innocence in that building, which has been turned into a Court and Prosecutor’s Office whose task is to bring as many Serbs as possible there, torment them and convict them—which for us is the same as murder. The hungry dogs of war barked in front of that building throughout the war, just as every time the Sarajevo kadis released Naser Orić and all those butchers who should have received deserved sentences, which instead are served by Serbs,” Kojić said.

INITIATIVE OF CAMP INMATES’ ASSOCIATION

The President of the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska, Anđelko Nosović, recently announced the initiative for the Prosecutor’s Office and Court of BiH to be relocated from the site of the former notorious camp for Serbs 'Viktor Bubanj' in Sarajevo and noted that assistance from the institutions of Republika Srpska will be sought for its realization.

He explained that the initiative will be submitted because at that location today fatal and shameful verdicts are handed down against the leadership of Republika Srpska and the Serb people.

“The establishment of the Prosecutor’s Office and Court of BiH at the site of a dungeon where children, women and the elderly were tortured and Serbs were killed is a deliberate provocation meant to belittle and humiliate Serb war victims and the entire Serb people. No one has yet been held accountable for the crimes committed against Serbs in the notorious camp ‘Viktor Bubanj,’ through which about 5,000 Serbs passed, while 500 were killed in that dungeon,” Nosović stressed.

He recalled that the authorities of the Federation of BiH prevented the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska on September 19, 2003, from placing a memorial plaque on that building in memory of the killed Serbs.

“The FBiH authorities have not allowed Serb camp inmates to place a memorial plaque at any site where Serbs were killed, starting from Kazani, through Sarajevo’s former Dobrovoljačka Street, Vraca and Zlatište above Sarajevo, to Brčanska Malta in Tuzla and other execution sites,” Nosović noted.

HJPC HAS NOT EVEN CONSIDERED INITIATIVE OF SERB CAMP INMATES

The President of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) of BiH, Sanin Bogunić, said that he has “no particular comment” on the initiative of the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska for relocating the Prosecutor’s Office and Court of BiH from the building of the former camp for Serbs, noting that “the institutions have been based at that location for more than 20 years.”

“I think such stories have come up in the past, from various sides,” Bogunić told SRNA.

The HJPC told SRNA that this institution has not yet considered the matter.

“In line with this, we are not in a position to comment on it,” was the brief reply from the HJPC to SRNA’s question on how they view the announcement by the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska that they will request the relocation of judicial institutions from the wartime camp for Serbs—the former 'Viktor Bubanj' barracks.

MEMORIAL PLAQUE FORBIDDEN

The FBiH authorities on September 19, 2003, prevented the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska from placing a memorial plaque in the former 'Viktor Bubanj' barracks in Sarajevo in memory of the several thousand detained and 500 killed Serbs when it served as a wartime camp.

About the crimes in the 'Viktor Bubanj' camp—into which the High Representative Paddy Ashdown, by imposed act, placed the Court of BiH after the war—some former inmates wrote books detailing how they were treated.

Strahinja Živak spent two and a half years in 'Viktor Bubanj' and the Central Prison before being released in November 1994.

He was under investigation for eight months there, and after endless interrogations, based on a forced statement, without witnesses, he was accused of “having influence in the division of BiH.”

Throughout that time Živak slept on concrete, sharing a room of six square meters with 16 other people. During the trial he had no legal protection whatsoever.

In his book I Live to Testify, Živak writes about monstrous abuses, rapes and killings of Serb prisoners.

“There were also women in the prison. Through the bars I saw 33 women being taken for a walk. There were pregnant women. There were entire families. One girl with special needs was terribly abused, and they accused her of being a sniper!? In the evenings, policemen drank and after 10 p.m. they would take women away,” Živak recounts.

Witnesses testified years after the war about the horrible tortures they endured in 'Viktor Bubanj.'

There are many testimonies about people being beaten with rifle butts, boots, baseball bats, even rough planks.

Women testified that they were forcibly taken from 'Viktor Bubanj' to the center of Sarajevo to the 'Zagreb' hotel, which also served as a kind of brothel, where camp inmates were raped.

Imprisoned Serbs were subjected to mock executions and returned to their cells, with promises that “they would be killed tomorrow.”

There are also testimonies from 'insiders' about the abuse and killings in the 'Viktor Bubanj' camp, known to the public for years, but they did not mean much to the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH.

Marko Mikerević, who during the war was mobilized as a lay judge in the District Military Court in Sarajevo, in his book The Sarajevo Dungeons of Death claims that the most prominent figures of then Muslim politics knew about the crimes in this camp.

In the book, published in November 2004, Mikerević accused then chairman of the FBiH Commission for Missing Persons, Amor Mašović, of demanding exclusively the bodies of camp inmates from the wardens and guards, so that he could then exchange them with the Serb side for captured Muslim fighters.

Mašović publicly denied these accusations, but it is not known whether the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH investigators ever questioned him about these allegations.

According to Mikerević’s testimony, the camp was frequently visited by Alija Izetbegović, Ejup Ganić, Mustafa Cerić, Rasim Delić, Sefer Halilović, Dragan Vikić and other high-ranking political and military officials of the wartime Muslim government in Sarajevo.