NOV 26, 2013: JUDGE THEODOR MERON STANDS IN FRONT OF THE ‘WHITE HOUSE’, PART OF FORMER OMARSKA CONCENTRATION CAMP, WHERE EXECUTIONS TOOK PLACE IN 1992. Photo: Katarina Panic.
Former prisoners of the Omarska concentration camp expressed anger that the Hague Tribunal’s president was not permitted to see all the former concentration camp’s buildings during his visit.
Holocaust survivor and the presiding judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Theodor Meron, visited the former Bosnian Serb concentration camp on Tuesday which is now a working iron mine.
Armed guards oversee staged lunch at Omarska concentration camp. Hungry prisoners were given food and paraded in front of TV cameras. Ian Williams, ITN, 6 August 1992.
The company that runs the mine, ArcelorMittal, only permitted Mr Meron to see one of concentration camp’s four buildings, the so-called ‘White House’, which was used as a makeshift torture chamber by guards during the 1992 Serb-run ethnic cleansing campaign.
Omarska concentration camp was used by the Serbs to detain and torture more than 5,000 people in 1992. Many of them were killed and dumped in nearby Tomasica mass grave that Mr Meron visited yesterday. Images of emaciated inmates at the camp which were broadcast to the world by British journalists shocked the international public.
Hungry prisoner in the Omarska concentration camp. Ian Williams, ITN, 6 August 1992.
When Mr Meron asked to see more of the former camp, he was only allowed a brief look inside one other building.
“I would like to have had an oportunity to show Mr Meron places where I saw dead bodies, where I was beaten,” said Satko Mujagic, a Bosniak from the nearby town of Prijedor, who spent several months in this concentration camp in 1992.
Mujagic said he was angry because he was not tortured in the ‘White House’ but in other buildings at the camp, and only had to clean up other inmates’ blood in the building that Mr Meron was allowed to see.
Aerial view of the Omarska concentration camp complex with a ‘White House’ building. Source: the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
“I am very sad not be able to explain to this man the pictures I have in my head in the places that they were created, and these places are so near to us,” he said.
“It is horrible to see signs of the bullets which were fired at people” said Mr Meron, adding how he had been touched by the words of one ex-inmate who spoke of “the bodies that he saw every morning, about the food truck that come every morning to bring food and carry away the bodies”.
ArcelorMittal meanwhile said that it had fully co-operated with every pre-arranged aspect of the ICTY president’s visit.
Aerial view of the Omarska concentration camp complex. Source: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
“The areas to be visited were specified in advance by the ICTY, in line with the published protocol for visits, and safety and operational arrangements were made accordingly,” the company said.
“The group was given full access to the area requested, around the White House. No advance request was made for access to аnу other area,” it said.
More photos:
War-time photo of the Omarska concentration camp in August 1992. Source: The Hague Tribunal.
Bodies of Omarska concentration camp victims awaiting DNA-identification and burial.
Filed under: Genocide Tagged: Bosnian Genocide, omarska concentration camp, Prijedor Genocide
