War crimes prison officer surrenders

A former Bosnian Serb prison camp officer accused of crimes against humanity surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal today.

Dusan Fustar is charged with ordering the execution of dozens of Croat and Muslim inmates.

The 47-year-old former mechanic from the Prijedor area of Bosnia could be sentenced to life if convicted of any count. The tribunal does not have a death penalty.

He surrendered at the tribunal’s Prijedor office of the tribunal, accompanied by his lawyers, and was quickly flown to The Hague. Tribunal officials do not discuss the logistics of transfers.

Fustar was indicted with six other camp officers and shift commanders of the Keraterm camp, where hundreds of Muslim and Croat detainees were beaten, starved or shot to death in 1992.

Keraterm was one of three camps in Bosnia’s Prijedor region that operated in the spring and summer of 1992, holding around 6,000 prisoners. Hundreds of inmates were tortured, starved and murdered, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors have compared the camps to the Nazi death camps. They were the most well known in a system of 39 facilities set up to ‘‘cleanse’’ the region of non-Serbs and establish a wider Serbian state, prosecutors say.

In one of the worst incidents at Keraterm, more than 200 people were locked in a sweltering warehouse and gunned down by guards who rattled off round after round through the metal doors.

More than 150 were killed and others were wounded.

Fustar was accused of ordering the execution of about 20 survivors of that massacre as punishment for the escape of detainees.