NO JUSTICE EVEN FOR SERB CHILDREN, 140 OF WHOM WERE DETAINED

ODŽAK, MAY 4 /SRNA/ - 140 Serb children were detained in camps located in the area of the federal municipality of Odžak, two of whom were five and a half months old, but there is no justice in BiH for the mental, physical and sexual abuse they were subjected to, the Odžak `92 Prison Camp Detainees Association.

This Association reminds that two girls aged 10 and 15 were raped during the imprisonment.

"The majority of detained children were between the ages of eight and 15. They were detained in a camp at an elementary school, and later they were moved to private houses where they were guarded by the HVO military police", according to the Odžak `92 Association.

A total of 105 children were freed through the exchange. The rest were freed when the Serb army liberated the area of the municipality on July 15, 1992. A few days before that, on July 4, 1992, 50 women and 53 children were exchanged.

"If there is no justice for the adult Serbs from the area of the Odžak municipality, is there no justice for the children who were exposed to physical, psychological and sexual abuse," the Association asks.

The Association noted that until recently, records were kept that there were 104 children detained in the prison camps in Odžak, but subsequent research revealed a number of 140.

Recalling the horrors they experienced, the Serb prison camp inmates state that during the occupation of the Odžak municipality, 429 Serb women and girls were detained in private houses and subjected to sexual abuse.

"A total of 68 Serb women were raped," noted the Odžak `92 Association.

The Odžak Serbs first went through the camps in the elementary school and the Strolit factory, where 1,294 Serbs were imprisoned, of whom 860 were men, and the rest were women and children.

After the liberation of the Odžak municipality on July 15, 1992, 410 detained men and 35 women were transferred to what was then Bosanski Brod to the prison camps located in GIK warehouse, the warehouse of the Tulek department store, and the sports hall of the High School Centre.

With the liberation of Brod on October 7, 1992, 208 men and one woman were transferred to the camp in Orašje, and 54 men to the camp in Slavonski Brod, where they spent at least 90 days, in the Bardak tavern, which was owned by a Serb before the war.

The last inmate from the Odžak municipality, who was transferred to the camp in Orašje, was exchanged in Čelebić on June 19, 1993.

The Association emphasized that from May 8, 1992 to June 19, 1993, 42 Serb inmates from the area of the Odžak municipality were killed. There was no Serb-populated village in that area where the residents avoided suffering.

They remind that several former members of the 102nd Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council were sentenced to a total of 85.6 years in prison, and there are also those who have been accused but are unavailable to the judiciary of BiH, as well as those who have been legally acquitted.

The Odžak `92 Association believes that assigning such cases to the cantonal courts proved to be disastrous, they believe it is the washing of the resumes of members of the 102nd HVO brigade who committed crimes.

Three were acquitted, and only one was sentenced to one year before the Cantonal Court Odžak, where Serb inmates from this municipality go to testify,.

"Even the one who was sentenced to one year has the right to buy off the sentence and be a free man, while the feeling of indignation and anger only remain for the victims," the Serb inmates point out.

This year, and 33 of those unfortunate events have passed, they will remember everything they survived, as well as those who did not make it.