MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR SERBS KILLED IN NOTORIOUS SILOS CAMP

TARČIN, JANUARY 27 /SRNA/ - A memorial service was held at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Osenik to mark three decades since the closure of the notorious Silos camp, followed by the laying of flowers at the gate of the former prison camp in Tarčin, where during the war 600 Serb civilians were imprisoned, 24 of whom died as a result of physical abuse, beatings, torture, and starvation.

Alongside the faithful, former detainees, and members of their families, the memorial service, officiated by Protopresbyter-Stavrophore Miljan Rađenović, was attended by Boško Tomić, envoy of the Serb member of the Presidency of BiH Željka Cvijanović; Staša Košarac, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers; Anđelko Nosović, President of the Association of Former Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska; and Viktor Nuždić, Acting Director of the Republika Srpska Center for Research of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons. They laid wreaths and flowers at the gate of the former camp.

For the first time, representatives of the OSCE and the Embassy of the United Kingdom in BiH attended the memorial service.

According to earlier testimonies of former Serb detainees and officials of Republika Srpska, the Silos camp in Tarčin was and remains a symbol of the suffering of the Serb people during the past war.

Silos, a concentration camp for Serbs run by the so-called Army of the Republic of BiH, was opened on May 11, 1992, in a facility that had been used to store wheat before the war, and was closed on January 27, 1996, on Saint Sava’s Day, two months after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed.

According to testimony from former detainees, Silos had all the characteristics of the infamous World War II concentration camp Auschwitz.

In that camp, one of a total of 126 in the area of wartime Sarajevo, detainees were mostly civilians from Tarčin, Pazarić, and other nearby places.

The youngest among them was fourteen-year-old Leo Kapetanović, and the oldest was Vaso Šarenac, who was over 85 years old and died in Silos, where the temperature was always ten degrees lower than the outside temperature.

Women were not spared from torture either, including one who was in her sixth month of pregnancy.

The detainees learned about the closure of the Silos camp from representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

They left the camp on January 26, 1996, while the last 42 detainees were released the following day, finally bringing the doors of this dungeon to a close.

In July 2021, the Court of BiH issued a second-instance verdict, sentencing six individuals to a total of 42 years in prison for horrific crimes committed in Silos.

Nezir Kazić, former commander of the 9th Mountain Brigade of the so-called Army of BiH, was sentenced to 10 years; former head of the Public Security Station in Hadžići, Fadil Čović, and former commander of the Silos camp in Tarčin /until August 1994/, Bećir Hujić, were each sentenced to eight years.

Mirsad Šabić, commander of the Police Station in Pazarić, received a six-year sentence, and former Silos camp commander /from August 1994/ Halid Čović, and former camp guard, Nermin Kalember, were each sentenced to five years in prison.

The six were convicted of illegal detention and inhumane treatment of Serb and Croat civilians held in the Silos camp, the Krupa barracks in Zovik, and the 9th of May Elementary School in Pazarić, as well as denying the detainees the right to a trial and sending civilians to forced labor.