(15) 27 August-16 September:

Four of seven survivors of the August 21 mass murder at Vlasica (reported to the UN in an earlier submission) testified that 18 Muslim male "patients" were interned in the Paprikovac Optical Hospital on the outskirts of Banja Luka. At the time, this hospital was being used as a military hospital by Bosnian Serbian forces in the region.

The four subjects had been found wandering separately in the woods several days after the mass murder at Vlasica. Turned over to Serbian military forces, each was brought to Banja Luka where they spent August 24-27 in the surgical hospital before being transferred to the optical hospital across town. All four remained in the optical hospital until September 16.

At the optical hospital, the four subjects were in room 11 on the fourth floor of the hospital with six other Muslims. Their door was always locked. The hallway wall of their room was made of translucent glass permitting the guard stationed outside to see inside. Nightly, wounded Serbian soldiers from elsewhere in the hospital, as well as guards, beat them with cable wires and police batons. Each of the four subjects was beaten every day. There were two other rooms accommodating four Muslims each.

The prisoners received a slice of bread a day, with some broth. They were given almost no pure water to drink, but they were forced to drink urine regularly. All four had hospital discharge papers that claimed that had been treated for internal injuries and chronic heart diseases. The prisoners, however, said they had never ever received so much as an aspirin. (Department of State)

(16) August-September 92:

A fifth survivor of the incident described above, a 16-year-old Muslim student who had been among the several hundred men taken from Trnopolje camp on August 21 on a convoy to Vlasica Mountain, also survived the mass murder of several hundred prisoners.

An elderly Serbian man found the youth unconscious some 9 days later at the edge of the village of the Vlasica. Two Serbian soldiers took him to the school in the village where they interrogated and beat him. He was then sent to the Paprikovac hospital in Banja Luka, ostensibly to have a broken finger and bruised back examined.

The 16-year-old, on being checked into the "hospital", was beaten 20 times on his kidneys by the military police in attendance. During his month in Paprikovac "hospital," he was fed one slice of bread each day, was rarely given pure water to drink, and dropped in weight from 68 to only 50 kilograms. Every morning and evening, the guards forced the prisoners to drink a glass of urine. The youth was able to identify the military commander of the hospital. (Department of State)

(17) 21 July 92:

A 42-year-old Bosnian Muslim, married to a Serb, was arrested in his apartment in Prijedor on July 21. Civilian police took him in a police car to Omarska, where at the gate to the camp, guards began to beat him. During the beating one of the guard said, "Don't forget, his wife is a Serb." The prisoner hoped this would cause the guards to go easier on him. Instead, they beat him more violently. Three soldiers beat him for about 10 minutes.

The prisoner was then taken to Omarska's "white house." There the guards began beating him and other prisoners, forcing them to lie on the floor and stomping on them with their jackboots. After 2 days without any food, he was taken for "interrogation."

He was led to a room in what he thought had been the administration building of the Omarska facility before the war. There were five guards in the room. He was told to kneel on the floor. The guards then circled him, beating him with metal bars and police batons. Twice he lost consciousness and collapsed on the floor. Each time the guards doused him with water, revived him, and continue to beat him.

After 2 or 3 more days of beatings, he was transferred from the smaller room in the white house to a larger hall full of prisoners. For 5 days, he was unable to walk and had to lie next to the sinks that were used as toilets. During his 12 days at Omarska, this prisoner received food only once. (Department of State)

(18) 26 May-6 August 92:

A 30-year-old Muslim was imprisoned for over 9 weeks at Omarska camp. He had been apprehended by Serbian forces in Prijedor on May 26. The witness reported having seen the following:

Guards frequently beat people with thick electrical cables, often so badly that they could not stand afterward; in administering these beatings, guards would hit prisoners in specific places on their bodies, often the kidneys, in an effort to rupture important internal organs.

Prisoners were forced to run across broken glass in their bare feet; when they fell, guards would beat them with nightsticks and iron bars.

As a punishment administered in front of a group of prisoners, a guard cut off the testicles of a prisoner with a knife; one prisoner was forced, under threat of being executed, to bite off the testicles of another prisoner with his teeth. The only water that prisoners had to drink was from a river contaminated by discharges from an iron mine; the water was yellow, the prisoners urine ran red. (Department of State)

(19) 12 May-18 August:

A 59-year-old retired Serbian was arrested by Croat authorities on May 12 in Mostar along with his son. No reason was given except that they were Serbs. Held at a detention center in Mostar, they were forced to do hard labor, building bunkers and other defensive structures at the airport. Those who could not work or stopped working to rest repeatedly were beaten around the head and kidneys with nightsticks. (Department of State)

(20) May-June 92:

The Luka-Brcko camp at one time held about 1,000 civilians, predominantly Muslim internees. At one point, approximately 50% of the internees had crosses engraved into their foreheads with knives by Chetniks who gave them Orthodox names such as Alexander. The internees were required to say "I am Alexander." One internee agreed to say "I am Alexander" only after 3 or 4 days of beatings. He was convinced by fellow internees that it is better to say it than to die. This did not happen to Croatians, only Muslims.

Also a daily occurrence, a police commander, and other camp personnel came into the hangar with Raki (an alcoholic beverage) and tartan (white pills). An internee had his mouth opened and the police commander forced the Raki and pills into his throat. The police then told the internee to beat with a club everyone in the hangar. He obeyed, and for 1-2 hours beat up his fellow internees in the third hangar until they passed out.

Internees lived in one of three hangars; the first, 20 by 28 meters in size, housed 650-700 men, the second, 20 by 40 meters, housed 120-180 men; and the third, 20 by 40 meters, housed approximately 300 men, women, and children. Many killings and tortures occurred in front of internees in the third hangar. There was also one more area where women and children were kept. The second and third hangars were connected by a large door through which people could see each other.

Internees in the first hangar slept standing up because of the limited space. In the other two hangars, they were allow to sit but legs had to remain straight on the ground, all internees had to remain along the wall, and the central area had to remain empty. They were allowed to go to the toilet once a day for no longer than a minute. The toilet was located in another building. In many instances, approximately five 10-liter buckets were placed in each of the hangars and used as toilets. The conditions at the camp were so bad that some of the internees went crazy. One man rammed his face into a wall, causing it to bleed. In June, goats were placed in the hangars and lived with internees. The stench inside the hangars was a combination of goats, human excrement, and dead internees placed behind the third hangar. Blood was ankle deep in the area where the bodies were placed.

The internees initially each received 50 grams of bread and approximately 0.15 liters of thin bean soup each day. Later every 10 persons received 800 grams of bread per day, and every two people shared a 0.16-liter portion of bean porridge once a week. The porridge was always spoiled. Still later, 10-12 people shared 800 grams of bread every 4 days. (Department of State)

(21) Late May 92:

A 32-year-old Muslim said Serbian irregular forces had entered his village of Donji Garevci in late May 1992 and rounded up all the Muslim men for incarceration. The group was marched to Trnopolje, then bused to Omarska camp. When they arrived at Omarska, they found that the camp was "full," and the group was taken by buses to a converted ceramic tile factory called Keraterm in Prijedor. Guards at Keraterm formed the prisoners into three groups and administered a beating, from which the witness still had a lump on his skull in October. The healthiest looking were beaten most severely.

The men were herded into an airless room about 20 x 25 feet. The room held over 200 people. The witness, detained there for 29 days, received one meal a day - usually a few beans and two slices of stale bread - and lost 17 kilograms during this period.

The witness saw and was forced to participate in sadistic brutality. Guards would force the prisoners to run in a circle and kick the person in front of them in the kidneys. Every evening, irregulars came to the room and called out names from a list. These persons were taken to another room and beaten severely. To revive the prisoners from these beatings, guards would urinate on their heads or turn a fire hose on them. The witness was able to identify several of the guards. (Department of State)

(22) Early May 92:

A witness described conditions at the five detention centers in Bosanski Samac. The prisoners were Croats, Muslims, and Albanians. According to this personal account, nearly everyone - including women and elderly men - suffered beatings and other forms of torture.

The beatings were at the beginning done by special forces. Later the job was taken over by policemen who guarded us. They were local Serbs who carried out their jobs far more brutally than the special units men. They beat us with iron bars, wooden 2 x 4s and truncheons, iron and rubber devices.

The witness reported being prevented from drinking water and from going to the toilet. Prisoners were forced to eat sand, swallow their own feces, and perform sex acts on fellow prisoners. (New York Newsday)

(23) September 92:

At least 150 Muslim women and teen-age girls - some as young as 14 - who have crossed into Bosnian Government-held areas of Sarajevo in recent weeks are in advanced stages of pregnancy, reportedly after being raped by Serbian nationalist fighters and after being imprisoned for months afterwards in an attempt to keep them from terminating their pregnancies.

"When we let you go home you'll have to give birth to a Chetnik," Serb fighters supposedly repeated to some of the women. "We won't let you go while you can have an abortion."

A 15-year-old Muslim girl told the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] on October 1 that she had been seized by Serbian fighters in May in the Serb-held Sarajevo district of Grbavica. She said she had been held in a small room with about 20 other girls where they were ordered to undress.

"We refused, then they beat us and tore our clothes off. They pushed us on the floor. Two of the men held me down while two others raped me. I shouted at them and tried to fight back but it was no use. As they raped me they said they'd make sure I gave birth to a Serbian baby, and they kept repeating that during the rest of the time that they kept me there."

Most of these charges were made by women and girls who said they were attacked in April and May in towns and villages in eastern Bosnia. (The New York Times)

(24) May-August 92:

A 41-year-old Croatian female from Kozarac, a 40-year-old Muslim male from Prijedor, and a 39-year-old Muslim male were interned for approximately 3-month periods at Omarska camp. All three subjects claimed to have witnessed severe beatings, sexual torture, mutilation, and killings.

In part because they had spent such long periods in the camp, they were able to identify what they believed to be virtually the entire personnel structure of Omarska camp.

Omarska was one of four very large camps in the Prijedor area. It was an aluminum mine before the conflict. The other three camps are Keraterm, Trnopolje, and Manjaca. Civilians were interned at all four camps while most alleged POWs were sent to Manjaca. Many detainees described Omarska as the worst of the four.

Omarska camp was commanded by a retiree from Prijedor. His administrative deputy was a middle-aged woman who kept the camp records, i.e., the payroll ledger of the guards and officers, the guard shift schedule, etc.

The commander of security at Omarska (Obezbjedjenja) was a 29-year-old inspector in the Bosnian Serbian police before the war. He came from the village of Petrov Gaj, near Prijedor. Because of his position and the amount of time he spent at the camp, many internees concluded, incorrectly, that he was the overall commander at Omarska. In late May his deputy was a 30-year-old Serb from the nearby village of Lamovita who had Muslim brothers-in-law whom he tried to hide in his house. When this was discovered, he was replaced. This change of deputies occurred in late June.

Omarska camp had three regular guard teams. The teams worked 12-hour shifts, from 7 am to 7 pm. They rotated consecutively. The three shift leaders were named and identified.

A 40-year-old policeman from Lamovita was identified as the most brutal of the shift leaders. The most heinous tortures and beatings, and the largest number of deaths, took place during his shifts. A middle-aged waiter who used to work at the Hotel Europa in Omarska before the war was identified as a generally less brutal shift leader. A man in his thirties from the village of Maricki, who was in the police reserve and had worked in the Omarska mine before the war, was identified as less brutal than the former shift leaders. Each shift team was comprised of 15-20 guards.

Omarska had various inspectors who regularly interrogated the prisoners. Six of them were named. At least two of the three witnesses personally identified and named 39 Omarska guards.

The female witness said 38 women in the camp slept near the commander's headquarters, in room 102 and 103. As they tried to sleep, the women heard screams of prisoners being tortured next door, in the "interrogation" room. Each morning the women were awakened at 6 am, and two were chosen randomly to clean the ÒinterrogationÓ room, which was covered with fresh blood each morning. The women were always hidden from journalists. Omarska had two buildings used exclusively as torture centers, the "white house" and the "red house." Some people returned from the white house, but no one sent to the red house ever came back. Educated internees tended to be sent to the red house.

All three witnesses, as well as other detainees from Omarska, said that each day 10 to 15 new corpses lay in the field next to one of the "dormitories." These corpses, as well as others, were driven away by small trucks. The trucks often had blood stains all over them. These witnesses were able to identify at least six of the drivers. (Department of State)

(25) 14-15 June 92:

A 32-year-old Muslim auto mechanic was arrested in Hrnici near Trnopolje on June 14 and was locked up at Trnopolje camp with 10 others in what was called the "shock room." He spent 24 hours locked in this room on June 14 and 15 with no food, water, or toilet.

Through a window, the detainee saw prison guards bring 12-15 teenage girls to the camp. The girls struggled to get away from the guards, but none escaped. The girls were forced to enter a building across from his cell. That evening, through the window, he saw a guard rape a young girl next to the Red Cross building at the camp. The witness was able to identify this guard, considered one of the cruelest guards at Trnopolje. (Department of State)

(26) May 92:

One of the victims of an earlier reported rape of 40 young women from Brezovo Polje told a reporter in late August that her Serbian abductor had told her: "We have orders to rape the girls. I am ashamed to be a Serb. Everything that is going on is a war crime." (New York Newsday)

(27) October 92:

By October, five members of UNPROFOR [UN Protection Force] contingent in Sarajevo had been killed by combatants. In one incident, two French soldiers were killed by fire from Bosnian Government forces, which were engaged in a firefight with Bosnian Serbian forces after a local cease fire negotiated by UNPROFOR broke down. (Department of State)

(28) 13 August 92:

American ABC television producer David Kaplan was killed on August 13 by a sniper fire while traveling in a motorcade in Sarajevo with Prime Minister Milan Panic. He was hit in the back and died at UN headquarters in Sarajevo. (The New York Times, Department of State)

(29) July 92:

A CNN [Cable News Network] camerawoman was shot and severely wounded in July by sniper fire in Sarajevo. She is recovering after several operations at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. (The New York Times)

(30) 18 May 92:

An ICRC convoy carrying food and medical relief on May 18 was attacked as it entered Sarajevo, despite the security guarantees obtained from the parties concerned. Three ICRC staff members were wounded, and one of them, Frederic Maurice, died the next day at Sarajevo hospital. (ICRC Bulletin No.197)

(31) April 92:

A Belgian member of EC [European Community] monitoring mission was killed south of Mostar in April, apparently in an attack by SDS forces. (Department of State)