Serbs convicted of war crimes

Images of starved men at Omarska in 1992 prompted international action

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The U.N. War Crimes Tribunal has convicted five Bosnian Serbs for crimes against humanity carried out in 1992.

The sentences, handed down on Friday, ranged from five to 25 years for murder and torture committed at Omarska detention camp in Bosnia during 1992.

Judge Almiro Rodrigues, of Portugal, told the men they had all known about or participated in rape, murder and persecution at Omarska as part of a system of camps intended to wipe out the non-Serb population in Prijedor.

"You participated in this hellish orgy of persecution," he said, reading out the court's verdict for over an hour.

"You knew what was happening."

The Omarska trial is the first at the tribunal to deal with a "system of concentration-style camps" aimed at the creation of a greater Serb state.

Testimony from 140 witnesses and over 400 documents were presented during 113 days of hearings.

Prosecutors had asked the panel of three U.N. judges to sentence the men to between 25 years and life. The defendants all pleaded innocent and requested their cases be quashed.

Mitigating circumstances reduced some of the sentences.

About 6,000 Muslims and Croats were held in Omarska -- a former mining complex about 12 miles from the Bosnian town of Prijedor -- and two other nearby camps.

Four of the defendants, Miroslav Kvocka, 44, Milojica Kos, 38, Mlado Radic, 49, and Dragoljub Prcac, 64, were convicted of running Omarska as commandants and deputy commanders.

A fifth defendant, taxi driver Zoran Zigic, 43, was found guilty of torturing and killing prisoners.

"You enjoyed using force, you enjoyed inflicting pain...You also enjoyed humiliating detainees by forcing them to lap up water like dogs or to drink their own blood," presiding judge Rodrigues told Zigic, Reuters news agency reported .

Omarska was the largest of three camps in the Prijedor region of northern Bosnia, along with Keraterm and Trnopolje. They operated for about five months in 1992. Prosecutors compared Omarska to the Nazi death camps of World War II.

"The living conditions in Omarska camp were appalling. Some of you, perhaps, remember the images filmed by a television team showing emaciated men with haggard faces and often a look of resignation or complete dejection," Rodrigues said.

"These are the images which would make the international community react and are, perhaps, one of the reasons why this Tribunal was established," he said during an hour long verdict.

New arrivals at Omarska were reportedly beaten with batons and rifle butts and jammed into stiflingly hot rooms with no beds and poor sanitary facilities, prosecutors stated.

While most of the prisoners were male, several dozen women were kept at the facility and were forced to mop floors littered with hair and teeth and stained with blood.

The women were raped nightly by guards, prosecutors said.

Three other suspects were indicted by the tribunal in 1995 for alleged crimes at Omarska, one of them for genocide. Zeljko Meakic, Momcilo Gruban and Dusan Knezevic remain at large.