Serbs jailed for prison camp murder and torture

The UN war crimes court today jailed five Bosnian Serbs for up to 25 years for murder and torture in a prison camp.

Judge Almiro Rodrigues of Portugal told the men they had all known about or participated in rape, murder and persecution at the camp as part of a ‘‘widespread, systematic 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 in The Hague.

Images of half-naked, starved inmates at the Omarska camp run by Bosnian Serbs in 1992 during the Bosnian war jolted the world’s conscience and prompted calls for intervention.

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.

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

New arrivals were reportedly beaten with batons and rifle butts and jammed into stiflingly hot rooms with no beds and meagre 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.

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.