This report is based upon research conducted in Bosnia and Hercegovina, in particular in the region of Foca, in April 1997 and from December 1997 until February 1998. Sources for wartime abuses included research conducted by Human Rights Watch during the war. The report was edited by Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. Special thanks go to Dinah PoKempner and Michael McClintock. Crucial assistance in the preparation of the report was provided by Emily Shaw. Human Rights Watch would like to acknowledge and thank many individuals whose contributions to the research made this report possible, yet who cannot be named. They risked their own safety and the safety of their families to expose the truth, in the hopes that their perpetrators will be brought to justice.
The Foca municipality was the site of some of the most brutal crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Hercegovina.(1) Bosnian Serb civilian, police, and military officials, in collaboration with paramilitary troops and former Yugoslav Army reservists called in from Serbia and Montenegro, took over Foca in April 1992. They established a wartime government called the "Crisis Committee," much like those established in many towns in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory, to plan and carry out the expulsion of the non-Serb population. Using a thorough propaganda campaign to convince the local Bosnian Serb population that they were under threat of a Muslim fundamentalist coup, the Crisis Committee established a network of detention centers, where non-Serb civilians were detained, tortured, raped, and either expelled, killed, or "disappeared," leaving the town as it is today, almost completely ethnically Serb. Businesses and properties of non-Serbs were expropriated or destroyed.
The persons alleged by many sources to be responsible for the crimes committed in Foca during the war continue to wield power in the town. In many cases, they are in governmental or police positions. In other cases, they hold even higher-ranking positions in the Republika Srpska or Bosnian government. In these positions they may have been identified by international observers as responsible for protracted noncompliance with the provisions of the Dayton Accords, as well as systematic human rights abuses in the post-war period. In Foca, where the authorities and police remain loyal to the indicted Radovan Karadzic, there has been no refugee return, there is no freedom of movement or expression, there has been absolutely no vetting of the police, and there are six publicly indicted war criminals known to be harbored in the town. French NATO troops stationed in the town since late 1995 refused to arrest a single indicted person until recently, when on June 15, 1998, they arrested Milorad Krnojelac based upon a sealed indictment. Six publicly indicted persons, however, remain in Foca. The International Police Task Force (IPTF), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) work in Foca as if it were any other town, turning a blind eye to past and current abuses, in favor of "peaceful relations." The failure to hold officials accountable for past and present abuses in Foca, however, has not brought compliance with the Dayton agreement; there has been no return of refugees or displaced persons, no screening or vetting of the local police, freedom of expression, association, and movement remain severely restricted, and there have been numerous cases of attacks and harassment against international journalists and other members of the international community, and against local citizens who do not agree with the authorities. Yet multilateral institutions and donor governments have considered granting--and in some cases, granted--considerable sums of economic assistance to the Foca area. In fact, several donor countries and organizations, including the Italian government and the World Bank, the European Union (E.U.), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have invested in the Foca area in the past year. In December, the World Bank turned down a proposal to send additional assistance to Foca only after nongovernmental organizations protested to donor governments. Human Rights Watch is seriously concerned that in the current atmosphere of impunity and noncooperation described in this report, this money is likely only to enrich and empower those officials responsible for ongoing violations of human rights and systematic obstruction of the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement. (For more details, see section on International Investment in Foca.)
Further, the failure of the international organizations in Foca to report publicly on abuses, and to press for alleged perpetrators to be brought to justice, has given a false impression of a town described recently to Human Rights Watch as "very calm." Accountability has been cast aside in Foca for so long that indictees and persons alleged to be responsible for heinous crimes remain in control, ruling with total impunity. In the current climate in Foca, any international economic aid which would be granted to the town would serve to line the pockets of these individuals.
The military takeover of Foca began on April 7, 1992. The takeover was a coordinated effort between Serb irregulars from Serbia proper and Montenegro, and paramilitary forces of the Bosnian Serb army. They quickly established the Crisis Committee, which worked in collaboration with military and police officials in the planning and execution of the takeover. The Bosnian Serb army inherited weapons and other military supplies from the former Yugoslav National Army (Jugoslav Narodna Armija, JNA), and paramilitary troops from Serbia and Montenegro were promptly brought in. What took place in the Foca municipality after the Bosnian Serbs were firmly in control was beyond anyone's worst nightmare.
Once the Bosnian Serb and Serb forces had completely occupied the Foca municipality, they began rounding up all non-Serb civilians from the surrounding villages, separating the men from the women, and imprisoning them in numerous detention facilities. The Foca police worked closely with the Serb military forces occupying the municipality and played primary and direct roles in the arrest, expulsion, detention, rape, torture, and murder of the non-Serb population of the town. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was denied access to Foca from the time of the takeover on April 7, 1992, until the beginning of October of that year. By the time they gained access, it was too late for thousands of non-Serbs from Foca who had been imprisoned and subsequently either expelled or killed. By the time the ICRC entered, few non-Serbs were left alive in the municipality.
The takeover of Foca was planned and managed by a crisis committee, similar to committees that were formed in other areas of the Serb territory. The leaders of the Crisis Committee in Foca have been identified by residents of Foca and others as Velibor Ostojic, Vojislav "Vojo" Maksimovic, and Petar "Petko" Cancar. Under the authority of the Crisis Committee, military and paramilitary forces from the Serb-controlled territory in Bosnia and from Serbia and Montenegro carried out "disappearances," detentions, expulsions, torture, executions, and rape, with the assistance of the local police. Businesses and factories, as well as private property belonging to non-Serbs, were expropriated and the former owners and directors either imprisoned, expelled, or "disappeared." Bosnian Muslim (hereafter "Bosniak") and Croat men were sent, often via the short-term detention center "Livade," to the central Foca prison, called the "Kazneno-Popravni Dom" or "KP Dom" (Home for Criminal Rehabilitation), where they were tortured and many "disappeared." KP Dom is mentioned in the indictments against Radovan Karadzic, then leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and Ratko Mladic, then commander of the Bosnian Serb army. Non-Serb women in Foca were taken from their homes, separated from their husbands, and many were held in short or long-term detention centers. The Partizan Sports Hall, located in the center of the town very near to the municipality building and the central police station, is where women were held and systematically raped or otherwise sexually assaulted as part of the Serb campaign. The Crisis Committee headquarters was in Velecevo, on the edge of the town of Foca, which also later became the sight of a detention camp where non-Serb women were sexually assaulted as part of the "ethnic cleansing" campaign. Other rape camps were established in Buk Bijela and in private houses and apartments in town. There are also allegations that women were detained and sexually assaulted in the Foca high school during the takeover in 1992.
Nine individuals--Dragan Gagovic, Gojko Jankovic, Janko Janjic, Dragan Zelenovic, Zoran Vukovic, Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac, Radovan Stankovic, and Milorad Krnojelac--are publicly indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for their involvement in the "ethnic cleansing" in Foca. They are indicted for crimes against humanity, including rape, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and violations of the laws or customs of war. These indictments are the first in history in which persons were indicted for rape as a war crime.
Seven of the nine public indictees remain at large, and six are known to be living in the Foca municipality. They have been living freely, under no apparent fear of arrest by the French SFOR (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-- NATO--troops in the region are called the Stabilization Force, or SFOR) troops stationed in the region, until recently the only SFOR sector in Bosnia in which no arrests had taken place. These indicted persons can often be seen in public places such as bars and restaurants, which are also frequented by SFOR troops. According to a February 20, 1998 article in the Dutch newspaper Nieuwsblad,
Take for instance Janko Janjic, one of the Serbs on the list, who drinks coffee and rakija in the "Merkur," the "Passager" or the "Krsma" every morning around nine. All three bars are located near the bus station in the center of the town....Should French SFOR troops decide to arrest Janko Janjic while he is sipping his rakija in the "Krsma" bar, they could make a second arrest in the process: the owner of this bar, Dragan Gagovic, also features on the Hague's list.
Aside from those individuals who have been publicly indicted by the Tribunal, many individuals who are not yet publicly indicted but are alleged to have been responsible for war crimes and human rights abuses during the war still hold positions of power. These persons, in their current influential roles in the government, infrastructure, and police of Foca use their continued influence to block the implementation of the Dayton Accords, including in particular those provisions relating to human rights guarantees and the return of refugees. They severely and actively restrict freedom of movement; they block all attempts at freedom of expression by local civilians; and they blatantly prevent any discussion of the return of displaced persons and refugees. Furthermore, since the signing of the Dayton Accords, the "unindicted" have frequently blocked the work of the international community by refusing to attend meetings to discuss Dayton implementation, and by obstructing projects which they felt would threaten their stranglehold on society. International journalists who visit have been threatened. Volunteers who came to work with the teenagers in the town have been harassed and kicked out of the town. Micro-credit projects which could assist the women in Foca by offering them opportunities for income generation have been halted by the authorities. Residents of Foca who interact or work with organizations that the authorities perceive as a threat to their power have been harassed and threatened. "Foca is a closed, dark place," people who have worked there say, time and again.
To date, efforts by the international community to obtain compliance with the provisions of Dayton have been unsuccessful in Foca. In the two and a half years since the signing of the Dayton Accords, any officials within Foca who have attempted to cooperate with the international community have eventually been replaced by their more radical, nationalistic, and isolationist colleagues.
The June 15, 1998 arrest by French SFOR troops was the very first time French SFOR troops had arrested any indictees in Bosnia, and though late in coming, it was a welcome step.
However, the failure of French SFOR to arrest the six individuals publicly indicted by the ICTY who still wander free in Foca is just a small part of the picture of an international community that is prepared to let bygones be bygones. It is no longer an unusual sight, nor does it even seem strange any more to see international armed troops patrolling in Foca, sitting in its cafes, eating in its restaurants, drinking in its bars, "keeping the peace." As a result of the international community's failure to insist, from the outset, on compliance by the Foca authorities with the provisions of the Dayton Accords, and as a result of the failure of the French NATO troops to arrest anyone responsible for war crimes in Foca for two and a half years, individuals allegedly responsible for mass murder and rape have been free to rule the town they conquered with complete and total impunity. And they have succeeded splendidly: three of the individuals linked to overseeing the planning, organization, and execution of the massive "ethnic cleansing" in the Foca municipality, namely Petar Cancar, Vojislav Maksimovic, and Velibor Ostojic, have been rewarded for their efforts. Cancar has been promoted from mayor of Foca to minister of justice of the Republika Srpska. Maksimovic sits on the Republika Srpska National Assembly and remains in his post as rector of the Philosophy Faculty in the Serb-controlled part of Sarajevo. Even more shocking is that Ostojic was appointed head of a state human rights commission in the Bosnian Parliament.
Despite the Foca authorities' systematic obstruction of the peace accords, and their ongoing loyalty to Radovan Karadzic, bilateral and international donors have targeted Foca for reconstruction assistance. In December 1997, nongovernmental organizations raised objections to a planned World Bank project in the area, and as a result, that project did not receive final approval. Nonetheless, other reconstruction projects in Foca, financed by bilateral donors including Italy, multilateral donors, including the World Bank, the EBRD, the E.U., and the UNHCR, have gone forward. Donor organizations appear eager to give economic aid to Foca, apparently under the misguided notions that such aid would coax compliance from the local authorities, and that the donor's vetting procedures can adequately ensure that war crimes suspects and Dayton obstructionists would not benefit. To the contrary, any international funding that would enter Foca in the current atmosphere would be almost impossible to track. In Foca, where even the local Serb population cannot speak freely against its authorities; where the international staff and SFOR troops based in the town are under pressure to be completely uncritical in order to maintain peaceful relations and in order to live there in safety; and where access is severely limited for persons who wish to investigate and report on the reality in the town, any mechanisms established to track economic aid would fail. The authorities block access to information on companies, individuals, and local institutions in Foca. This information would be crucial to any vetting system to prevent aid from enriching indicted war crimes suspects and those allegedly responsible for human rights abuses. For this reason, it is highly unlikely that aid granted to the municipality will reach its target beneficiaries.
It is the obligation of international donor institutions and countries to prevent money from flowing into the hands of persons who may be responsible for war crimes and serious and widespread human rights abuses during and after the war, or who are responsible for ongoing obstruction of the implementation of the Dayton Accords in Foca and throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina. It is also their obligation to ensure that international economic aid is not used in ways that would strengthen the political power base of such individuals.
This report should serve as a resource for information on the crimes that were perpetrated against the Bosniak and Croat population in Foca during the war, as well as on persons who have either been indicted for these crimes by the ICTY or whose responsibility for these crimes should be further investigated.
Over twenty persons have been named in this report in connection with human rights abuses committed in Foca. We have named individuals where we have found some evidence that they may have played a role in the institutions or processes that contributed to the gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law that took place. Human Rights Watch does not state or imply that named individuals are necessarily responsible for these violations; however, in these cases we believe that further investigation is warranted. Where it is at all possible, we have provided the names of witnesses and sources of information; however, many witnesses, both residents of Foca and international journalists and observers, have specifically requested that their identities be withheld because of genuine fears of retaliation.
Lastly, but most importantly, this report exposes the suffering of the survivors of the "ethnic cleansing" in Foca and is therefore a plea from them for accountability. Their risk in sharing information from their experiences must not go unnoticed, especially in the atmosphere of impunity that reigns in Bosnia and Hercegovina. They shared their tragic stories with great pain, but also with the hope that in recalling their nightmares, and in naming their abusers, the world would not forget, and those responsible would be brought to justice. Their wish, universally, was to go home to Foca.
Human Rights Watch urges the Foca municipal authorities and police to:
Human Rights Watch calls upon Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik to:
Human Rights Watch urges all nongovernmental and other international humanitarian organizations working in the region, including the International Rescue Committee, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Equilibre, and Oxfam and all others who have been involved in efforts to provide programming and assistance in Foca to:
The actual takeover of Foca began on April 7, 1992. However, Bosnian Serb civilian, police, and military officials had been preparing for the attack for many months, gathering weapons they had inherited from the former JNA. I.H., once a prominent and well-connected professional in Foca and now living in exile, described the time leading up to the takeover to a Human Rights Watch representative:
At the end of February and the beginning of March 1992, especially after the referendum of Bosnia, they [the Serbs] just gathered technical equipment in preparation for war. These preparations were done in all municipalities in Bosnia and Hercegovina, especially in municipalities where Serbs formed half or more of the population, knowing that Bosniaks did not have any weapons at all, and with promises of assistance from Milosevic and the JNA. They rejected a dialogue and decided to fight a war.(3)
Bosnian Serb leaders in Foca formed the Crisis Committee, similar to those which were formed in other regions of Bosnian Serb controlled territory to oversee the takeover and "ethnic cleansing" campaigns (see below for details). The Crisis Committee in Foca was charged with the organization, planning, and carrying out of the Serb takeover of Foca. The Crisis Committee supervised all aspects of the attack on Foca, including the activities of the local police, and worked in close collaboration with the Bosnian Serb army. To assist them in the takeover, the Crisis Committee called in paramilitary troops and reservists from neighboring Serbia and Montenegro. Many non-Serbs were violently expelled from Foca, and others were imprisoned in one of the network of detention centers which the Crisis Committee organized for this purpose throughout the municipality. The property of non-Serbs was confiscated and expropriated by the conquering Serb forces.
The military takeover of Foca took only nine days, yet the suffering inflicted on the non-Serbs who remained in Foca after the initial attack lasted for months thereafter. Non-Serb men were imprisoned in abominable conditions in detention centers, where they were routinely tortured, beaten, and terrorized. Scores died in the process, or were summarily executed by Serb forces. Many non-Serb women were held in rape camps throughout the municipality, where they were systematically sexually assaulted. The ICRC estimates that there are 588 persons missing from the Foca municipality.(4) The ICTY has publicly indicted nine individuals for rape as a war crime, and genocide, committed in Foca.(5) Many others who have not yet been indicted were involved in the planning and commission of war crimes and other systematic human rights abuses in Foca. Many of these individuals are currently in positions of power in the municipality.
Several individuals have been identified in the source materials as those primarily responsible for the attack upon and ethnic cleansing of Foca. One of them apparently called in additional forces from Niksic, Montenegro. Bringing the total number of Serbian forces in and around Foca to about 4,000 by the end of April [1992].[sic] (8)
The U. N. Commission of Experts report describes the reported involvement of forces under the direction of Zeljko Raznatovic "Arkan" and Vojislav Seselj, two extremist paramilitary and political leaders renowned for having carried out mass murders and brutal "ethnic cleansing" campaigns. The report states:
Arkan and Seselj reportedly deployed soldiers in the county of Foca. Reports also indicate the presence of Commander Turtle's Units, the Montenegro Guard, the Uzice Corps, and Pero Elez. During the occupation of Foca by Arkan's men in late April 1992, many bodies were thrown into the river...Seselj's forces and volunteers were said to have participated in the fighting in the city of Foca, as assistance to the Serbian Democratic Party forces.(9)
L.K., a woman from Miljevina, a village outside the town of Foca but within the Foca municipality, told Human Rights Watch that "there were lots of different army groups in the area." L.K. was taken from her home in Miljevina to the Partizan Sports Hall,(10) where she reported that "groups of Serbs came at night, many Serbs from Foca, and also many Serbs from Serbia."(11)
E.D., a Bosniak from Foca, reported that he and his family were taken from their house in Foca by Serb neighbors, on April 13, 1992, and imprisoned in a private house with approximately fifty-five other persons. After being held captive for five days in this house, E.D. reported that seven or eight men from Montenegro, in uniforms, took twenty-five of them to the KP Dom prison. E.D. said that he knew that these men were from Montenegro by their pronunciation and by the fact that he did not recognize any of them. He claimed that the uniforms the Montenegrin troops were wearing were newer than those of the local Bosnian Serb forces and that they had all kinds of equipment, including knives, bombs on their belts, and automatic rifles, whereas the local Bosnian Serb forces did not have such equipment and had old uniforms.(12) G.F., a Bosniak woman from Foca, reported that she was taken from her home and detained in the Partizan Sports Hall in September 1992 by "reservists" in uniforms. She said they wore gloves and hats, were speaking the Serbian dialect, and she deduced they were thus not from Bosnia. According to G.F., these reservists were well armed and there were female soldiers among them.
We were held for half a day in Partizan, and then [one of ] these Serbs from Serbia told us he was sorry that we are all "children" because he will have to kill us. They confiscated all our jewelry. We were hugging each other and very scared. They said, "Now Balija [a derogatory term for Muslims] you will go swim in the Drina."...They took us to Mrdalici, and there we met Cetniks with long beards.(13)
The program of attack on Foca started from a few directions. Most important is from the direction of Livade, where they established their military garrison, and in this garrison was the first camp. From April 11 to April 17, 1992, they started bringing people from the town and most from the local community of Aladza. The first prisoners in Foca, including myself and approximately 150-200 others, spent these first five days in Livade, and then we were all taken from there to KP Dom.(14)
According to I.H., Veselin Cancar was the commander of the facility during his imprisonment.
Livade was used during the whole time between April 1992 and August or September 1992 as a transit center where prisoners were taken for a few days and then transferred to other camps or transit centers...the whole offensive came from that direction....Life in Livade was very difficult. We had no organized meals, food was distributed randomly. There were no hygienic conditions, and the accommodations were wet and full of water. When they first brought people to Livade, they separated the men, women, and children. Later, the men were taken to KP Dom and the women were prepared to be sent out of Foca. Veselin [Cancar] was the commander, but the Serb Guard was there, as were Serb territorials and reservists from the former JNA.(15)
I.H. said Veselin Cancar was also the commander of the local Serbian territorial forces, which were involved in the main offensive against Foca. Veselin Cancar was arrested by the Bosnian government after the war and tried on charges of war crimes. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his involvement in the crimes in Foca and is currently serving his sentence in the Sarajevo Central Prison.
The office of Mayor Ibro Poplata, the exiled Bosniak mayor of Foca, reported that there are 456 missing persons whom the municipal government-in-exile knows are missing from the Foca municipality,(16) however, the ICRC has received 588 reports of missing relatives from survivors.(17) The vast majority of these missing persons--some 354 men according to the Foca municipal government-in-exile, which represents the former residents of Foca--were "disappeared" from KP Dom.
Reports from survivors of KP Dom are laden with gruesome tales of starvation, torture, intimidation and threats, beatings, and "disappearances." E.D., a survivor of KP Dom, reported to Human Rights Watch:
I was taken to KP Dom on April 17. Every night at 8:00 they would come to the rooms to take people for interrogations. There were 730 people in KP Dom during the time I was there....Miodrag Koprivica came with two other guards and police officers to people's rooms every night at 8:00 and called people's names from a list...They would take some people to the former meeting room and beat them, and around 12 midnight we heard shooting and these people usually never returned...Of the eighteen men in my room, only eight were left at the end. On average more that half of each room was killed or "disappeared."(18)
I.H., who was imprisoned in KP Dom for more than six months, described his experience:
KP Dom opened [as a detention center] on April 18. Men from the ages of seventeen to eighty-five were held there. When I was brought there, there were already a hundred to 150 there. They were mostly from Donje Polje, the area around KP Dom....During April and May, they brought around 600 men to KP Dom. Around 400 of them were taken away and "disappeared." I think they were all killed. This happened between April and December 1992. They were taken away in small groups, mostly at night, and sometimes during the day by the guards, with the excuse of taking them to be exchanged....The army made decisions about what would take place. There were lists of people and prisoners were taken from the lists.(19)
I.H. told Human Rights Watch that one copy of the list of prisoners was in the hands of the director of the facility. He further told Human Rights Watch that the military decided who would be taken away. I.H. also said that Milorad Krnojelac was the manager (upravnik) of the facility and that sometimes the police from the town, then under the command of Dragan Gagovic (indicted by the ICTY), came to take people away:
Regarding prisoners, civilian and military structures collaborated closely. For example, for each Serb soldier who was killed on the front line, a few Muslim prisoners would be taken away and killed...The days Serb soldiers were killed on the front line, the Serb soldiers were very angry. These were the worst days. We got less food. We knew what had happened by the way they treated us. After a couple of days burying their soldiers, they took [away] prisoners.
We had very poor food, a little tea and a little bread, three times per day, and some macaroni in water....There were no washing facilities. We lost weight, and had psychophysical symptoms. We had difficulty walking, pain in our muscles, and dizziness. When this happened, the guards would joke.
People were consistently taken away in small or big groups. The first big group was between June 13 and 30, 1992. Thirty-five people were taken at night. Before that men were taken at night and tortured. After that they "disappeared." Some of the men [who "disappeared" in that time period] were Krunoslav Marjanovic, a Croat reporter and television mechanic, Mate Ivanovic, who was a nurse, and Adil Granov. There were prisoners with heart diseases, there were minors, there were elderly....During the nights, when people were brought to the prison, some of them were in torture chambers, and when they were taken away, they were also tortured. The guards and military police were torturing them.(20)
The torture rooms which I.H. spoke of are shown on a map of the layout of the KP Dom prison, provided to Human Rights Watch by a former Foca official and attached as Appendix I to this report. The U.S. Department of State reported in its Seventh Report on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia about a fifty-nine-year-old Bosniak male who was taken with his son and eighteen others to KP Dom:
A 59-year old Bosnian Muslim from Foca was at home on April 27, 1992, when Serbian special forces entered his home and forced him and his son outside. The soldiers wore camouflage uniforms and black headbands and were complete strangers to him. He assumed they came from Serbia because they spoke in Ekavski dialect. The witness, his son, and eighteen other men from the neighborhood were taken by buses to the local KP Dom.....The Serbs running the camp kept written records and biographic files on all those interned....Those running the center instilled fear in the Muslim prisoners by selecting certain prisoners for beatings. From his window in Room 13, the witness saw prisoners regularly being taken to a building where beatings were conducted. The building was close enough for him to hear the screams of those who were being beaten....From his window in Room 13, he saw prisoners covered with blood, leaving the building.(21)
F.E., another Bosniak survivor of KP Dom, told Human Rights Watch he fled from his home in a village outside Foca when the Serb forces took over the Foca municipality. When he and his son returned a few weeks later they found their house had been burned down:(22)
A Serb army tank was going by, with buses and cars behind it. We tried to hide behind the house. The last car stopped and four men got out of the car. They were all in black, they had bombs on them and masks on their faces. They said "hands up!" and they asked us "what the fuck are you doing here, you Ustashe,(23) where all is burned down?" They put us in the car and brought us to Ustlikolina.
The four men [in black] brought me before [the police commander], who knows me from before because I had a little cafe in Ustikolina before the war. My son had escaped via the bridge and had fled back to Gorazde. [One man] was wearing his police uniform...his younger brother was there with him, also wearing a police uniform...they told me to get into the car. [He] said, "we have to take you to KP Dom for interrogation." They took me to KP Dom on May 15.
One woman and two men in civilian clothing interrogated me in KP Dom. They asked me questions about the army in Gorazde and how I got back to my house from there...They had all my documentation in front of them....They took me to room 18 and did not mistreat me. There were eighty people in room 18, and it was full. I heard at the time that there were 713 people in KP Dom. I knew everyone in the room...On September 17, they took thirty-five people ostensibly to pick plums, and they never came back. On September 25, they took twenty-five people, and they never came back. Among those who did not come back were Husein Cengic, Eso Dzano, Rasim Muslic, whose father they had killed in his home. Later they took Muradif Music and nineteen others. That was on October 9, 1992. They never came back...Those who were known to have been in the army in Gorazde were beaten. The others were not beaten. They did not beat me.
My friend had been taken to the basement where he was beaten. I asked...one of the guards if I could see my friend. He said yes. He was a friend of my brother and that is why he did this favor. He said I can see him for two minutes. He [the friend] was all bruised and black....[the guard] was next to me. [My friend] put his hand in his pocket and gave me money for cigarettes. They had not taken his money from him. In the same room where [my friend] was, there was one guy hanging one meter off the floor at the wall. Ropes held him up there and on one side there was hot water falling on one of his shoulders and on the other side there was cold water and he was crying. I did not know him but he was suffering a lot. It was really hot water, and he was really suffering and he was screaming. [The guard] told me not to tell anyone what I saw.(24)
The United Nations Commission of Experts report describes the KP Dom detention facility in detail, including the physical facility, the number of guards and the uniforms worn, and confirms the allegations of "disappearances."
One source reported that on 19 May 1992, there were 130 Muslim detainees in the Foca men's prison, and between 19 and 25 May, 400 new detainees were brought in. Inmates estimated at least 36 prisoners were killed by guards in June. Guards would typically enter a cell between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., call out inmates' names, inform them that they were to be exchanged, and take them away. These prisoners were never heard from again. Approximately 200 inmates were taken from the prison for unknown reasons in late August, most inmates believed they were killed by guards. Thirty-five prisoners were taken away on 15 September and 12 more at the end of the same month, allegedly for prisoner exchange. Prisoners released since that time failed to locate any of these men. Prisoners on the fourth floor observed guards carrying blankets containing what seemed to be human bodies and dumping them in the Drina River.(25)
The United States submitted information on violations of humanitarian law, including grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the Foca region to the U.N. Security Council on October 22, 1992. In their Seventh Report on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, the U.S. Department of State reports on the case of a forty-year-old woman witness to the killing of Bosniaks from Foca in early July 1992:
One night at 9 PM, the witness saw Serbs leading a group of seven people up to the "Tito" sign on a hill overlooking Foca. She said [that] group was driven up the hill in a yellow mini-van...She saw the Serbs make the group strip, take their money and the identification cards, and murder them with knives. The bodies were thrown in the Drina River. During the next four to five days, the witness saw the same yellow mini-van bringing people to the same site where they were slaughtered in the same fashion. She saw some bodies thrown in the Drina, and others thrown into [a] truck that were driven away. The witness said the van came from the direction of the men's prison at the KP Dom and she suspected [that] the victims were prisoners from that camp. She believes there is a mass grave under the "Tito" sign, and two or three mass graves near the outdoor stadium in Foca.(26)
According to reports survivors of KP Dom, Krnojelac, a teacher of mathematics by profession, was the manager of KP Dom until September 1993.(27) Human Rights Watch estimates that a large proportion of those who "disappeared" from KP Dom (estimated at 354 by former Foca municipal leaders in exile,) "disappeared" during the time of Krnojelac's tenure.(28)
I.H. informed Human Rights Watch that Krnojelac had substantial decision-making power during the period between April 18, 1992 and September 1993.(29) Similarly, the Bosnian government State Commission for Gathering Facts on War Crimes (hereinafter State War Crimes Commission), which conducted extensive interviews with survivors of the takeover of Foca as they were fleeing the town, identified Krnojelac as the manager of KP Dom during this time period.(30) Krnojelac, a teacher in a primary school in Foca until June 15, 1998, was arrested by French SFOR troops on that date, based on a sealed indictment by ICTY in the Hague. He is currently in the Hague awaiting trial.(31)
Miodrag Koprivica - Wartime: Interrogator in KP Dom / Current: Police Inspector
Three survivors of the KP Dom detention center, E.D., F.E., and I.H., identified Koprivica to Human Rights Watch as an interrogator in KP Dom during their detention there.(37) Interrogations were a routine part of daily life in KP Dom, and all of the KP Dom survivors interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported having been interrogated repeatedly. Someone in the position of routinely interrogating prisoners in KP Dom would have been likely to know the identities of many of the detainees, and would also have been in a position to know about the fates of many of those who "disappeared." E.D. informed Human Rights Watch that, "Koprivica came every night at eight [and] called people's names from a list, and those never came back."(38)
I.H. told Human Rights Watch that he was in the next room when Koprivica was interrogating and beating a Bosniak prisoner named Adnan Berbergic. I.H. said that when Berbergic emerged from the interrogation room, he saw that he was badly injured by the beating and that later Berbergic told him that Koprivica had beaten him. Berbergic later "disappeared." Koprivica is currently a police inspector in Foca and is one of the suspects interviewed by IPTF for having allegedly participated in the beatings of two individuals in detention in December 1997. No arrests have been made in connection with that case. (For details, see Zoran Vladicic below, and also section on Human Rights Abuses Against the Current Population of Foca.)(39)
Vojo Starevic - Wartime: Criminal police inspector, interrogator in KP Dom / Current: Police officer
According to one source, Starevic was a criminal police inspector prior to the war and was the chief of the criminal police department during the war as well.(40) According to E.D. and F.E., two survivors of KP Dom, Starevic interrogated prisoners in KP Dom during the period of their detention.(41) It is likely he would have been in a position to know about the fate of many of the prisoners who "disappeared" from the detention center. According to two staff members of international organizations in the region, Starevic is still working as a police officer in Foca.(42)
Miro Burilo - Wartime: Guard, KP Dom / Current: Uncertain; Possibly Same
According to four witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Burilo was a guard at KP Dom during the time of their detention. F.E., who was imprisoned in KP Dom, reported that Burilo was in the interrogation room when he was brought to KP Dom in 1992. According to F.E., Burilo and two other guards told him to empty his pockets, and took 300 DM, some food, his ring, and his watch. Then Burilo and the other guards took F.E. to a room where he was kept during his detention in KP Dom. F.E. said he encountered Burilo many times during his stay in the detention center:
Burilo was the worst one in KP Dom. He couldn't wait for someone to beat up. I saw when Burilo brought Fikret(43) into KP Dom....Fikret was taken later to the basement and beaten...I heard that Burilo is still working in KP Dom...In August 1992 at 9 p.m. [nightly] Zoran [name withheld] and Burilo called many people from many rooms. They took people and beat them, we heard them scream. For more than one hour they beat them. They were beating people always in the basement, so you could hear them screaming. We were sitting in the corner afraid in our room. After more than one hour everything stopped and was quiet. We never slept at night because we were so scared. One morning they took us room by room out to the bridge and those people who had been taken that night all had their heads cut off. There were nine bodies and the heads were separated from the bodies....I recognized some of them as Munib Vejz, Salem Bico, and Ekrem Dzelilovic.(44)
E.D., who was detained in KP Dom and witnessed the abuses which took place there, named Burilo as "one of the most ugly. He mistreated everyone."(45) Another Bosniak survivor also reported that Burilo was one of the guards in the detention center during his entire imprisonment there, which was for fifteen months.(46) H.G., a witness who was in KP Dom during late 1995 and early 1996, said Burilo was still a guard there during his imprisonment.(47) According to two witnesses from Foca, Burilo is still a guard in KP Dom today.(48) Human Rights Watch was unable to corroborate this allegation.
Slavko Koroman - Wartime: Commander of Guards in KP Dom / Current: Uncertain; Possibly Police Officer
According to E.D., H.G., and I.H., all survivors of KP Dom who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Koroman was a police officer who worked in the KP Dom prison before the war. During the war, according to these witnesses, Koroman was the commander of the guards in KP Dom.(49) Someone in the position of supervisor of the guards in KP Dom would be responsible for overseeing their actions, which often included mistreatment, torture, and beatings as described in the above section. By the end of the war, according to H.G., who was imprisoned in late 1995 and remained in KP Dom until April 1996, Koroman was no longer working as a guard, but instead returned to his position in the police in Foca, yet continued to visit KP Dom.(50) The Bosnian government State War Crimes Commission alleges that Koroman was the commander of the guards in KP Dom in its bulletin of 1993, and includes Koroman in its list of persons allegedly responsible for war crimes in Foca. Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm that Koroman is still a police officer in Foca. According to B.A., a staff member of an international organization in the region, he owns the "Roma" coffeehouse in the town.(51)
Zoran Vladicic - Wartime: Police Interrogator in KP Dom / Current: Head of Criminal Investigations Unit for Regional Public Security Center (Ministry of the Interior)
H.G., a survivor of KP Dom who was imprisoned there late in the war, told Human Rights Watch that Vladicic was a police inspector in the prison during his time there. He said Vladicic and other police officers who worked in the prison transported the prisoners back and forth between the prison and Brioni, a farm where prisoners were used as forced labor.(52) E.D., an inmate of KP Dom from April 1992 until the end of the year, told Human Rights Watch that Vladicic interrogated the prisoners in KP Dom. E.D. believed that Vladicic had interrogated all prisoners in the detention center at least once if not more often. He stated:
All prisoners had interrogations with Zoran. He did not beat me during interrogations because his father worked where I worked [before the war]. But others came back bloody... Prisoners would have to go to interrogations many times, but I only had to go once.(53)
The Bosnian government State War Crimes Commission also alleges that Vladicic was an "interrogator in Foca prison."(54)
Vladicic is reportedly responsible, along with Miodrag Koprivica (see above), for the beatings of two detainees in the Foca police station in December 1997. One of the detainees was severely wounded by the beatings, and neither received medical assistance until three days later, when IPTF interviewed them during a routine inspection of the prison. Human Rights Watch viewed photographs of this detainee, taken by IPTF three days after his beating, in which the detainee's entire back from his head to his knees was severely bruised and bloody. IPTF informed Human Rights Watch that it had identified Vladicic as one of those who committed the beatings. According to the IPTF monitor, Vladicic claimed that he and Koprivica were in Montenegro on the day of the beatings. However, IPTF requested proof from the border police at the Montenegrin border and was informed that there was no record of their crossing. IPTF plans to present its findings in this investigation to the court in Trebinje. (For more details of this case, see section on Attacks Against the Current Foca Population, below.)(55)
Women and girls were also held in the Foca high school for different periods of time during the summer of 1992, from where they were usually transferred to Partizan. According to the U.N. Commission of Experts report:
On or about 3 July, 500 "Cetniks" surrounded the forest near Mesaje, where the remaining Muslims [after the April takeover and the mass imprisonment of non-Serb men] had fled, and killed and captured those within. Approximately seventy women and children and five old men were taken to a collection camp located in the high school in Foca....All seventy were kept there from 3 July to 17 July 1992. All were forced to stay in a former classroom ten meters by ten meters. They were able to use mattresses and blankets left behind by Serbian soldiers who had occupied the school earlier.....All women between ages fifteen and forty-five were continuously raped by Serbian military members.....On 17 July all those detained at the high school were transferred to the Partizan Sports Hall in the centre of Foca on Samoborska Street....They slept on the floor without mattresses or blankets.... "Cetniks" continued to rape women as they did earlier at the school.(58)
According to the U.S. Department of State's Seventh Report on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, on July 3, 1992, approximately thirty-six women were reportedly taken from their village in the Foca municipality to Buk Bijela, which was a construction site with barracks for workers, where they were systematically raped. One of the women reported that, after having been held there for several hours and raped:
The group was then taken to Foca high school where they spent eight days. Every night, three to five women were taken away and often returned severely beaten. They were taken by truck to the Partisan sport center in the middle of downtown Foca for forty days....This group from [this village] was the first group to be interned at Partisan, but more came later, eventually totaling seventy-four detainees....During her time at Partisan, the witness [said] the "soldiers" entered day and night to led [sic] away young women. One twenty-four-year-old woman was raped in front of the entire group of detainees. [sic](59)
G.F., a Bosniak woman from Miljevina, told Human Rights Watch that she remained in her house until September 3, 1992. On that date:
They took 250 of us, women and children, to Partizan. We were taken there by bus. Reservists came to get us, in uniforms. They wore gloves and hats. Those who took us were Serbs from Serbia speaking the Serb dialect. They were well armed. There were women among the soldiers well armed as well. I was in Partizan only from 12 noon until 4 p.m. the next day.(60)
In a separate interview, L.K., another woman taken with G.F. to Partizan, described in greater detail what they witnessed in Partizan during their brief stay there:(61)
They took us by bus into [downtown] Foca to Partizan. "Zeko" Vukovic(62) was the leader of the group which took us to Partizan at 12 noon on September 3. Two hundred and fifty women, children, elderly and disabled. Our imprisonment was because they [the Serbs] had lost territory near Gorazde and wanted revenge. We received news that another group of Muslim civilians were killed in "Focanske Jabuka." They kept us alive.
Partizan was a sports hall, they beat us, raped us, no electricity, no water, we slept on the floor.(63) Groups of Serbs came at night. There were many Foca Serbs and also many Serbs from Serbia. [They] mistreated women, beat women, tortured us. One woman recognized a Serb from Foca and asked him for help, he said to get some women together and he will take care of them the next day. They took these women the next day up to Velecevo in Brioni and mistreated them, raped them. There were five of them. Four returned, but the fifth did not.
Survivors of Partizan who were later interviewed in refugee camps outside of Bosnia described experiencing rape as a systematic ritual. Several of these women reported that they had been raped over one hundred times during the period of their imprisonment. One woman told Newsday journalist Roy Gutman that she had been raped approximately one hundred and fifty times during her detention in Partizan. Another reported having been raped up to six times a night.(64) Though women were sometimes raped in front of other prisoners in the hall, they were routinely taken to locations outside the hall to be gang-raped by groups of soldiers, often in deserted houses or apartments nearby. One woman who hid in an apartment close to the hall witnessed the same soldiers removing women from the hall every day; she estimated that there were fifty soldiers involved in the daily raping of prisoners.(65) Another woman tells of being taken to an outdoor stadium where she was gang-raped by uniformed soldiers. "I counted 29 of them. Then I lost consciousness."(66) When she woke up, she was taken back to the camp; one woman in a refugee camp in Kirklareli, Turkey, however, remembered four young girls, three of whom were teenagers, who never returned to Partizan after having been taken out one night. "When they take you away, they may kill you. So if you are raped, you feel lucky. At least you're alive."(67)
Partizan was an active rape camp for several months during mid-1992, and though there were many warnings about the existence of the camp, the reports were ignored. Locally, according to international journalists, complaints made by citizens to the police station next door were noted but never acted upon. One woman who was raped was told directly, "Get out, we can't help you," by a Bosnian Serb police officer in the station.(68) On a grander scale, the international community also turned a blind eye. At the same time that Partizan became a rape camp, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic asked French President Francois Mitterrand to see to it that the international community investigated the rape camps in Foca. The request was met with silence. Later, Mitterrand denied that such an appeal had ever been made.(69)
The practice of rape as "ethnic cleansing" made the Bosniak women of Foca into a deliberately targeted group. One woman interviewed in a refugee camp noted that the group of men who raped her and thirteen other women with whom she was imprisoned, "were a kind of military police [that] did nothing but rape. It was all organized; they had a group for raping and a group for killing."(70)
Human Rights Watch is aware of allegations of rape occurring at the camp at least until September 1992.
However, the "Serb territorials" supported by the Cetniks from Serbia occupied even the hospital around April 15, 1992, and did not allow anyone to leave the hospital, so that all men of military ability were taken from the hospital to KP Dom--doctors, nurses, and patients. The process of taking male patients from the hospital to KP Dom lasted until September 1992.... From the hospital, they took seven male nurses, and four doctors, and many other men....Among them was Dr. Aziz Torlak, who "disappeared" from KP Dom on July 7, 1993...A number of other medical staff stayed in the hospital for a longer time until June or July 1992, and after were taken to home detention, and later deported through Montenegro. Many of them survived.(71)
Former staff of the Foca hospital told Human Rights Watch that as early as one month before the takeover, the Bosnian Serb medical staff of the hospital began transferring medical supplies from the warehouse of the main hospital to a medical clinic that they were setting up exclusively for Serbs, in anticipation of what was to come. The Serb hospital was set up in Velecevo,(72) the site of the headquarters of the Crisis Committee, and later the sight of the detention center for women. According to reports of former hospital personnel, Dr. Radovan Mandic, who before the war was a doctor in the Foca hospital, was director of this ad hoc Serb hospital.
N.M, a nurse from Foca who was forced to stay in the hospital when Serb paramilitary forces took it over, told Human Rights Watch that:
From April 8 until April 12 the "Cetniks" entered and took over the hospital. Until that day we worked relatively normally, we had some reserve, we did not have any information about what was going on outside. We did not know anything, we were all in the hospital and did not go anywhere....the hospital was out of control. There were sixty children and many mothers. There were thirteen babies without mothers each around two or three months old. Seven kids were separated from their families. All the rest were mothers and children...The mothers were sleeping on the floor. They did not have anything. There were four nurses working for all those children. We could not take care of all of them....We were hungry, there was very little food. The bread was so hard that the kids lost their teeth while trying to eat it...we could hear the shooting.(73)
N.M. reported that several Bosniaks had been killed by Serbs behind the hospital. Similarly, the U.N. Commission of Experts, in a special report on mass graves in the Foca municipality, also reported that:
On 20 April [1992], several Muslims were taken behind the hospital, executed, after being found guilty of possessing weapons, and buried in a grass field behind the hospital. Muslim Foca residents believe that because the field had an unbroken grass surface before hostilities, and afterward it was full of overturned sod, the soldiers were using the area to bury numerous bodies.(74)
According to two former hospital employees, Dr. Radovan Mandic became director of the hospital for Serbs that was set up near Velecevo in Foca prior to and during the takeover in March and April 1992. Dr. Mandic and his associates began transporting medical supplies from the main hospital in Foca up to this then-newly established facility in March 1992, in preparation for the Serb takeover of Foca and the subsequent takeover of the hospital. This Serb hospital was set up to ensure that Serbs would get medical care, while the main hospital was taken over by Serb forces on April 15, 1992. The Bosniak medical staff and patients were held in the hospital for days on end, and many of the Bosniak male patients and staff were transferred to KP Dom, from where many "disappeared."(75) One former staff member of the hospital in Foca did claim that Dr. Mandic was responsible for overseeing the transfer to detention centers such as KP Dom and Partizan of all the non-Serb medical staff of the Foca hospital.(76) (For details on crimes committed in the Foca hospital, see above.) Human Rights Watch was unable to ascertain whether Dr. Mandic left Bosniak staff and medical patients in the hospital on his own accord or under duress.
The Bosnian government State War Crimes Commission alleges that Dr. Mandic was a "member of the SDS war HQ" (what Human Rights Watch refers to as the Crisis Committee), but Human Rights Watch was unable to corroborate this allegation.(77) Mandic was a candidate in the September 1997 Foca municipal elections, and, according to one local and one international source, is currently working as a specialist in the Foca hospital.
I was imprisoned on April 13, 1992. I was arrested from my cousin's house, where I was living temporarily. It was close to my house. Our Serb neighbors gathered us from the area and put my whole family in a house with fifty to fifty-five others. There were four or five men, all in Serb army uniforms. The boss of these men was Zoran Milicevic. I knew him because he was my neighbor. We spent altogether five days in that house. On the sixth night they separated the women and children and sent them home, telling them not to move anywhere but to go directly home. The men stayed alone in the house. The next morning, seven or eight Montenegrin men in uniforms came and took twenty-five of us to KP Dom. The house where we had been held was called the "Zait Sandal" house, after the owner, who was not there while we were held there.(78)
In the U.S. Department of State's Seventh Report, a Bosniak woman from Foca states that:
A forty-year-old Muslim woman was at home on July 14, 1992, in Foca when twenty-six Serbian soldiers--claiming to be Seseljovci(79) from Trebinje--came to her door. She said that she did not know most of the soldiers because their accents were not local, but that two Foca Serbs had led them to the Muslim homes. The soldiers hit the witness on the head twice with a police truncheon, asked for her husband, and ordered her to go outside. They sliced the neck of a 16-year-old boy with a rusty knife while asking for his father; the boy was not seriously injured. Then they ordered the Muslims to kiss an Orthodox cross, which they all did.
After separating the men from the women and children, they took the later group to the police station. As the group was leaving, the soldiers burned the Muslim houses. The women and children were separated into four groups at the police station and taken to separate houses confiscated from Muslim owners. The witness was placed with a group of 28 women...They were kept in this house for 27 days.
Day and night, soldiers came to the house taking two to three women at a time. They were four to five guards at all times, all local Foca Serbs.....the women were ordered to strip and soldiers entered the homes taking the ones they wanted. The age of women ranged from 12 to 60. Frequently the soldiers would seek out mother and daughter combinations. Many of the women were severely beaten during the rapes.
The witness was selected twice.....While the witness was
being raped, her rapist told her, "You should have already left this town.
We'll make you have Serbian babies who will be Christians." Two soldiers
raped her at that time; five soldiers raped [an] 18-year-old girl in full
view of the witness.....The witness also said she was forced to drink alcohol
and eat pork at the rape house.[sic](80)
Miljevina is the site of the Miljevina coal mine, which prior to the war provided coal for most of the surrounding region. Prisoners from KP Dom were allegedly taken to work in the coal mine during the war. In late 1996, Human Rights Watch received allegations that non-Serb individuals were still being held prisoner at several locations in the Foca municipality, one of which was the Miljevina mine. The allegations suggested that such persons may have been or may be held under false Serb names in order to hide their identities. In-depth investigations into these allegations not only in Miljevina but in the entire region were inconclusive. However, as long as the Foca authorities continue to obstruct SFOR's and IPTF's free and unlimited access to any and all alleged places of detention--access they are required to provide under the Dayton Accords--these allegations may never be totally disproven and the possibility, though slight, remains that persons may still be held.
Four witnesses from Miljevina reported that Pero Elez(81) was the head of the Bosnian Serb military in Miljevina. They also said that a local crisis committee was established in Miljevina to organize and direct the "ethnic cleansing" campaign and the takeover of Miljevina, and that the committee headquarters was located in the Motel Miljevina.
K.J., a man from the village of "Poljica," located very near Miljevina, informed Human Rights Watch that although he escaped from the village as it was being attacked, his aunt and cousin remained in the village and witnessed the attack. Although these relatives of K.J. refused to speak to Human Rights Watch representatives out of fear, K.J. alleged that his aunt had seen dead bodies of eleven civilians, which remained in the village after the Serb army pulled out. The aunt and cousin both alleged to K.J. that fifteen elderly persons had stayed in the village, unable to escape, and were never heard from again.
Mico Olovic - Wartime: Miljevina Chief of Police, Current: Same
Olovic was the chief of police of Miljevina during the war. According to G.F., L.K., K.J., and M.L.,(82) all former residents of Miljevina interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Olovic, as the chief of police, supervised the Miljevina police in their round up of non-Serbs. Those detained were frequently beaten in the Miljevina police station/jailhouse and transferred to various detention centers that had been established in the Foca municipality. Others were expelled from the region. According to reports from these survivors, those non-Serbs from Miljevina who were expelled or transferred to detention facilities first passed through the Miljevina police station/jailhouse. As chief of police, Olovic held a position in which he would be expected to have been aware of and directly involved in organizing such transfers. The fact that serious crimes may have been committed by those under Olovic's command raises concerns about Olovic's own knowledge of or larger role in those crimes, thereby necessitating a thorough investigation.
G.F., a woman from Miljevina, described the first few days of the takeover of Miljevina.
The Serbs surrounded us in all our houses. They told my husband he could not leave the house. On April 8 and 9, I was with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild. We could not go out. We stayed in the house. My husband stayed in the house for ten days. Mico Olovic was the commander of the police, but he did not come. I can't remember the name of the guy who took my husband. Two [men] came to take my husband...on May 2, 1992...one was a policeman and one was a reservist. They took my husband in a police car. Fifteen days later we went to visit him [in KP Dom]. We saw him for five minutes and a guard was with him.(83)
G.F. never saw her husband again.
L.K., another witness from Miljevina, reported to Human Rights Watch that after her father was arrested and taken to KP Dom, she hid her own husband in the basement:
Krsto and Zeljko Skakavac came to arrest my husband on June 9, 1992. They were police, under ...Mico Olovic....On June 8, Serbs died in a mine field. On June 9, because of that, under Mico's orders, they arrested thirty-eight people immediately. This always happened each time they lost some of their people....They took my husband to the police station and later I heard that they transported all of them in private cars and killed all of them. All thirty-eight were men, fathers and sons. Mico Olovic was in charge of all of this. I don't know under whose orders [Olovic worked]. He was so good before the war....I never heard anything about my husband again. I suspect [they are in] a mass grave in Mitrino Vrelo. I was in contact with these women whose husbands and sons were taken that day. No one got any information about the group. (84)
M.L., another woman from Miljevina, told Human Rights Watch that:
On May 2, 1992, thirty men were taken away from Miljevina. Seventeen of them returned, and the others did not. The seventeen who returned were taken away for good on May 9, 1992. We know nothing about them after that.(85)
L.K., whose father was among the thirty men taken from Miljevina on May 2, 1992, described his arrest, which she witnessed:
My father was arrested on May 2, 1992. Dragan Jovanovic arrested my father. He [Jovanovic] was originally from Montenegro, but had worked as a cop in Miljevina since a few years before the war. He [my father] was taken to the police station in Miljevina and from there to KP Dom. On May 15, I got permission from my firm and from Mico Olovic [chief of police in Miljevina] to visit my father. With me was another woman who was going to visit her husband and son [in KP Dom]. Her name was Ramiza and her husband's name was Zaim, and her son's name Zikro. [She was] killed ...in her apartment a couple of days later. Her son and husband are missing...I saw my father in KP Dom that day. He did not dare to say anything. He was very pale, and I only stayed five minutes. They did not let me give him the food I'd brought for him. There was a cop standing with us at the time.....I never saw my father again.(86)
Two other witnesses from Miljevina, K.J., and M.L., named Rade Draskovic as one of the police officers in Miljevina working under the authority of Mico Olovic.(87) K.J., a Bosniak man from a village just outside Miljevina, informed Human Rights Watch that his father told him he had been arrested by Draskovic, a police officer in Miljevina, who took him to the police station in Miljevina, from where he was imprisoned in KP Dom. K.J.'s father survived his detention, but was unwilling to meet with Human Rights Watch in person.(88)
L.K. described the power structure in Miljevina during the takeover, stating that,
Mico Olovic was the head, he was the chief of police in Miljevina. Krsto and Zeljko Skakavac [worked as police officers] under...Olovic...Rade Skakavac was a reservist who also worked under Olovic. Olovic was the chief of police before the war as well. Later on, women were involved too. Ruza Medjo worked under Olovic, as did Vera Skakavac, who took away people, but who was working under and with Tuta [Janko Janjic, indicted by the ICTY] and Pero Elez. There was a public house where Vera collected girls, in Miljevina, this was the Karaman House. (89)
The Karaman House (referred to by the U.N. as the Miljevina Bordello) was used as a detention center in Miljevina where non-Serb women were allegedly held and systematically raped. The U.N. Commission of Experts report describes the Karaman House and the involvement of the military under the local command of Pero Elez.
According to one woman, Pero Elez was the "main Cetnik" in Miljevina. According to her, he knew everyone in the village and therefore did no harm; however, his soldiers were criminal, and among them the Montenegrins were supposedly the worst. She stated, though, that it was understood that Elez took five 12 year old girls from Kalinovik and brought them to what the witness reported as Elez's bordello in Miljevina where they were kept as concubines.
Another woman describes being taken to a Nusret Karaman's house and held there six months with other young women and raped. According to another woman, the Miljevina bordello was located in a three story white house with an orange tile roof, owned by Nusret Karaman, a Muslim who worked in Germany. The bordello was 50 meters from her window across the Bistrica River. Another woman confirmed the existence of the bordello. She, too, could see it from her home. According to another source, by 3 September 1992, the only Muslims left in Miljevina were bordello girls. Another source reported that on or about 2 September 1992, 10 girls 12 years-old or less were being held in the brothel in Miljevina.(90)
According to the Foca municipal government-in-exile, eighty people, including women and children, were killed in Miljevina during the Serb takeover of the town between April and December 1992. All of these people, according to the exiled municipal authorities, passed through the Miljevina police station before being sent to meet their fates. Mico Olovic, as chief of police during that time, should have known about the fate of many of the eighty, as would anyone in his position.(91)
In fact, the Miljevina police station, under the authority of Olovic, was used as a detention facility itself. According to the United Nations Commission of Experts,
As in all other villages conquered by the Serb forces, Muslims [in Miljevina] were rounded up and placed in detention for various amounts of time. Reportedly, the Serbs used the Miljevina jailhouse to imprison all the men of the village on 11 June 1992....On 20 June 1992, a man was imprisoned at the Miljevina jail and held for seven days and beaten after which he was used to clear mines. He was forced to drive a car in front of a convoy to clear a path or at least ensure the location of a safe path through minefields for Serb forces. He was later imprisoned in KP Dom.(92)
According to international monitors in the region, Mico Olovic is still the chief of police in Miljevina.
Prior to the war, Vukovic worked in the coal mine in Miljevina in the accounting department. L.K. and G.F., two witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, alleged that Vukovic rounded up women and transported them to the Partizan Sports Hall as part of the "ethnic cleansing" of the non-Serb population in Miljevina during the war, under the authority of Pero Elez. L.K., a woman from Miljevina, reported that Vukovic headed a group of Serb soldiers who arrested her and 250 other women, children, elderly, and disabled non-Serbs from Miljevina at the beginning of September 1992 and transported them to the Partizan Hall, where many were raped and tortured. She said Zeka Vukovic thereafter stood guard in the hall and that he appeared to be in a position of authority. She also said that she witnessed five women being taken away on Vukovic's orders on September 4, 1992, from Partizan up to Velecevo, another detention center for women, where she later heard they had been raped and otherwise mistreated. Four of the five returned to tell the tale. The fifth is missing.(93)
A list of current officials in the Foca municipal government provided to Human Rights Watch by U.N. Civil Affairs lists a "Milenko Vukovic" as a member of the municipal executive board under President Radojica Tesevic. Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm that the person is the same as described above.(94)
Nedzo Golubovic - Wartime: Soldier / Current: Unknown
M.L., a Bosniak from a village near Miljevina, alleged Golubovic arrested four Bosniak neighbors, took them away, and later brought their bodies back to the village where M.L. and other residents of this village buried them. Although M.L. said she saw Golubovic take away the four Bosniaks and bring back their bodies, she could not confirm that Golubvovic actually committed the murders. According to M.L., these murders took place in May 1992, when Pero Elez was commander of the Bosnian Serb army in Miljevina. M.L. gave Human Rights Watch the names of the four who were murdered, but for reasons of security asked that we not name the victims or the village in this report.(95)
Vera Skakavac - Wartime: Officer / Current: Civilian in Miljevina
Vera Skakavac was allegedly involved in arresting women in Miljevina and taking them to the Karaman House detention center for women. The women held there were allegedly raped systematically during their detention. K.J., a Bosniak from Miljevina, claimed that Vera Skakavac "gathered girls and took them to the Karaman detention center."(96) According to a former Miljevina resident, Vera Skakavac worked under and with Tuta (Janko Janjic, indicted by the ICTY) and Pero Elez in arresting people. This witness said "there was a public house where Vera collected girls, in Miljevina, the Karaman House."(97) M.L., another witness from Miljevina, also said that Vera "took young women away to detention centers."(98)
According to a witness from Foca who participated in the September 1997 municipal elections as a member of the local election commission, Vera Skakavac is still living in Miljevina with her parents.(99)
three top associates of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Velibor Ostojic, a minister in Karadzic's breakaway government, and two other close aides, Vojislav Maksimovic and Petar Cancar, organized the military assault in Foca in April 1992 and took charge of the town, even stationing their own guards in front of the police station.(100)
The crisis committee (Krizni Stab) was a body frequently established in towns throughout the Serb-controlled territory of Bosnia to coordinate first the takeover of towns by Serbian and Bosnian Serb military forces, and later the systematic "cleansing" of non-Serb residents from the towns. Crisis committees, made up of Serb community leaders (typically SDS activists), played a number of roles in facilitating the transition from the multi-ethnic nature of these towns to "ethnically pure" Bosnian Serb towns. The responsibility of the crisis committees ranged from organizing the expulsion or "disappearance" of legitimate elected non-Serb officials and community leaders, to the expropriation of the property of the non-Serb citizens of the town. The actions of the Prijedor Crisis Committee (Krizni Stab Srpske Opstine Prijedor) are particularly well documented, and this committee is the model for the U.N. Commission of Experts' detailing the role of crisis committees within the context of the takeovers:
I. The concept of the Krizni Štab existed already in military strategic theory in the former Yugoslavia prior to the wars. The military as such was in a sense always afraid of the people. The military were above the people and had privileges which easily could lead to the people turning against the military. The military consisted of rather conservative or reactionary Communists, whereas the people seemed to be progressing towards democracy. The military wanted to control the people and thus needed to give the people the impression that in actual fact, the people controlled the military. In this the military, generally speaking, succeeded. The worst case scenario contained the plan that the military would establish the Krizni Štab. Thus, the military would make sure to have included in the Krizni Štab people whom they trusted. Trust in this context means loyalty and subordination.
ii. The Krizni Štab Srpske Opštine Prijedor was involved in the logistic support and production for the army. The Krizni Štab was an instrument of gaining complete control of the entirety of Opština Prijedor (or over any other geographic area where a Krizni Štab was proclaimed). Soldiers who worked for the interests of the army were posted also in industry and other production units to control the production, to gain support, and to control civilians.
iii. The Krizni Štab also had as its function to arm the Serbs within its operational area. Other functions were to block communications and make provocations within mixed ethnic settings. The pivotal function, however, was to voice that the Serbian people as such were threatened by the non-Serbs, the consequence of which was the urgent need for the JNA to act to protect the people. The idea was to be able to mobilize strategically with the consent of the people, i.e. to take up positions with artillery and tanks, etc. and soldiers to "defend" the Serbian people.(101)
Frequently, crisis committees were composed of a combination of military and civilian officials, as was the case both in Prijedor and in Foca. The civilians were either loyal SDS members, or pre-war officials themselves, or, in the case of Foca, they were allegedly close associates of then-Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who appointed them to their positions in the Foca Crisis Committee.
In the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights' report to the U.N. Commission of Experts on the fall of Zvornik,(102) a clear picture of the crisis committee as the administrative center of "ethnic cleansing" emerges. Before the military takeover of Zvornik, the SDS declared Zvornik a part of the "Autonomous Serbian Region of Semberija and Majevica" and facilitated through its members the delivery of arms and other military supplies. This group of activists also formed a "territorial defense" militia which, alongside other official military and paramilitary groups, terrorized and attacked residents in order to obtain control of the town. Shortly before or during the military attack, this group of activists became the Crisis Committee of the "Serbian District of Zvornik."(103)
Following the attack, the "Serbian District of Zvornik" appealed through media outlets to the residents who had fled, telling them that the violence was over and, less congenially, that they had to return within a matter of weeks or their property would be turned over to the "Serbian District of Zvornik." Once Bosniaks returned, they were forced to register their property and from that point, the "Serbian District of Zvornik" operated hand-in-hand with the "territorial defense" officially to confiscate property, terrorize minority residents, and collect and deport them from Zvornik.(104) A number of documents were necessary in order for the resident to be able to leave, all of which were prepared and provided by the "Serbian District of Zvornik."(105)
The Prijedor Crisis Committee achieved a similar degree of coordinated administrative and military control over Prijedor and surrounding towns. It was sufficiently integrated into that region's military structures to deliver ultimatums to several villages--including Kozarac and Hambarine--to the effect that unless its various demands for surrender of arms, a Bosniak police officer, and signatures to a "loyalty pledge" were complied with, the town would come under military attack. Following noncompliance with the Crisis Committee's ultimatums, both Kozarac and Hambarine were attacked.(106) The Prijedor Crisis Committee's power extended far beyond the specifically military, however, ranging from the ability to censor and spread propaganda via local media outlets, to controlling detention camps. (For a further discussion of the Prijedor Crisis Committee, see Human Rights Watch/Helsinki (now Human Rights Watch, Europe and Central Asia Division), "The Unindicted: Reaping the Rewards of 'Ethnic Cleansing,'"A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1997.)
The Foca Crisis Committee was no exception. Taking and maintaining control of the town throughout the war, it acted as the administrative organ for "ethnic cleansing." In April 1993, Karadzic confirmed that Ostojic, Maksimovic and Cancar "influenced the establishment of civilian authorities" in Foca.(107) According to interviews with survivors conducted by Human Rights Watch and reports of international journalists, other members of the Crisis Committee in Foca included Radojica Mladjenovic, president of the Executive Board of the Foca municipality for most of the post-war period, until the November 1997 Republika Srpska parliamentary elections; Vojo Bodiroga, civil engineer who was a member of Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in Foca; and Miro Stanic, who was president of the SDS in Foca. The Crisis Committee reportedly worked in collaboration with an ex-JNA Colonel Marko Kovac, who was one of the military commanders in the area, and with Branislav Cosovic, the local commander of the military police.
Under the authority of the Foca Crisis Committee, smaller local crisis committees were set up throughout other towns and villages in the Foca municipality. Human Rights Watch is aware of other local crisis committees in Ustikolina and in Miljevina.(108)
As discussed above, the Foca Crisis Committee was established with specific responsibility for organizing and supervising the takeover of the municipality. Widespread abuses--including summary executions, torture, rape, "disappearances," and mass expulsions--were essential tools for achieving the goal of an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb Foca. In other words, terror was the means used to achieve "ethnic cleansing." The members of the Crisis Committee have been identified by numerous former residents of Foca, as well as by international journalists who reported on the war, as having overseen actions of the military and civil forces that generated this terror.
While Human Rights Watch is not able to exclude the possibility that individual members of the committee may have themselves perpetrated abuses, we have obtained no first-hand evidence that would confirm such conduct. Instead, most of the atrocities were committed by individuals who would have been under the military and/or political command of the Crisis Committee members.
Membership in the Crisis Committee is a strong indicator that the participating individuals knew or should have known of the widespread and severe abuses being committed under their watch, and indeed that they may have been issuing direct orders for the commission of these abuses.
As mayor of Foca during the war, Cancar played a direct and leading role in the planning and execution of the brutal campaign of terror which took place in Foca. Cancar himself acknowledged that he was a member of the Foca Crisis Committee and that he was involved in setting up a "Serb" municipality. In 1996, Cancar was interviewed by a journalist about his involvement in the war:
I came from Sarajevo to Foca on April 4 [1992] before Easter. Already on April 6, the international community recognized Bosnia as a state. In Foca, Muslims were partying and celebrating....we already knew what was about to happen, that Foca was meant to be a guinea-pig, a trial case for the establishment of the green route from Kosovo, through Sandzak to Sarajevo(109)...We formed a parallel Serb municipality in order to stop the threat of Islam along the Drina. We took care of everything, the defense, the presidency, the Crisis Committee. I was prepared, in the worst case scenario, to seize power. There were fifteen of us in that Crisis Committee and we communicated with their headquarters [of the Muslims], but then we took power in order to protect the civilians, to prevent another genocide like in World War II. This war was caused by Muslims. Just like in World War II, chaos reigned, but we liberated the town in eight days....I think that the Muslim residents left in the most civilized way to Montenegro and Macedonia. That was better for both sides. Now all sides have their own leader, and their own territory, and I would rather not remember everything that happened.(110)
On November 28, 1993, Charlotte Eagar of the Observer (London) met Petko Cancar in his office and spoke to him about the then-upcoming referendum to be held in Republika Srpska on the Vance-Owen plan.
"We've got fifty-two Muslims here now and they're in the jail [referring to KP Dom]," said the mayor, Petko Cancar. "Five Serbian soldiers died in the fighting. Ask him. He lost his house; he is here to try to get a new apartment." Cancar pointed to a dentist waiting in the corner. Eye witness accounts described hundreds slain and their bodies hurled into the River Drina to float down through Gorazde. "From history, it's a tradition here. For five years we wouldn't eat fish from the Drina because of the dead Serbian bodies which floated there,' said the mayor, talking of ancient uprisings and the Second World War. "We are not eating fish at the moment, but that's because we are too busy to catch any."(111)
The Bosnian government War Crimes Commission regards Cancar as one of the main organizers of the attack on Foca, along with Maksimovic, Ostojic, and Miro Stanic, SDS president in Foca at the time of the takeover. In April 1995, Hina News Agency reported that the Bosnian public prosecutor's office had launched investigations against a list of approximately 100 individuals alleged to be responsible for war crimes, including Cancar, and that the material collected was reportedly sent to the ICTY in the Hague.(112)
Cancar himself readily admits having been an active member of the Foca Crisis Committee--a committee that had primary responsibility for organizing and overseeing the Bosnian Serb takeover of Foca, during which the non-Serb population of Foca was tortured, raped and otherwise mistreated, executed, "disappeared," or expelled from the municipality. While membership in the Crisis Committee is not, in and of itself, proof of criminal conduct, it is a strong indicator that Cancar and the other members were likely aware of and condoned the abuses being perpetrated to fulfill their plan, and indeed may have been issuing direct orders that these abuses be carried out.
In the post-war period, while Cancar remained in office as mayor, according to international personnel working in the Foca region during his time in office, Cancar refused to comply with the provisions of the Dayton agreement.(113) Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with international personnel working for four different institutions in the region during the time Cancar was in office. According to their reports, Cancar consistently blocked freedom of movement, restricted freedom of expression and association, prevented international agencies from fulfilling their mandates, and systematically blocked any discussion of the return of refugees and displaced persons. (For more details on the post-war situation in Foca, see below.) Cancar did his best to maintain an atmosphere of intimidation and fear in Foca that was felt by both international personnel and the local population alike. This atmosphere has been maintained by the officials who took over after Cancar's defection to Biljana Plavsic's SNS party in early summer 1997.
In January 1998, the new Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik appointed Petko Cancar as Republika Srpska minister of justice. This appointment by the otherwise more moderate Dodik was a surprise to many, and there were rumors at the time that Dodik was under pressure from hardliners to appoint Cancar. Despite serious questions about Cancar's conduct during the war, as well as substantial evidence that he has obstructed implementation of the Dayton agreement, the international community has not sought his removal from office.
As stated above, the leaders of the Crisis Committee played a central role in the takeover of Foca. As one of the three main leaders of