The members of the Association of War Camp Inmates in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Association of Inmates of the Banja Luka Region, the Association of Inmates “Prijedor ’92 and the Association of Inmates Kozarac, tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. at the location of the former concentration camp “Keraterm” near Prijedor will commemorate the 31st anniversary of “the night of execution” crime against the inmates of the “Keraterm” camp.
The concentration camp was formed in a pre-war ceramics factory in May 1992 by the Serb authorities who violently took over power and control in Prijedor at the beginning of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, announced the Union of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Four rooms of the factory, until then used as warehouses for finished products and marked with numbers, have since then become rooms for terrorizing and killing about 3,000 inmates of Bosniak and Croat nationality, and 371 inmates laid down their lives in this camp as the foundation of the Serb state.
The murdered inmates from the Keraterm camp were later found in the mass graves of Tomašica, Stari Kevljan and Jakarina Kosa, and the horrific scenes of terror in the camp and one night, in which over 190 inmates were shot, were part of the testimony before the court in The Hague by inmates of the Keraterm camp – Fikret Alić, Jusuf Arifagić and others.
This monstrous act and other proven crimes in Keraterm were listed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in the indictment against the then president of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, and more than 30 responsible persons from the then civil and military authorities of the RS and Prijedor, as well as paramilitary units, administration and guards of this and other Prijedor camps, were proven guilty and sentenced to long prison sentences.
The Keraterm camp was located on the site of a ceramics factory located on the “new” Prijedor-Banja Luka road, just outside the center of the town of Prijedor. At the Keraterm camp, the majority of the detainees were military-aged males.
Interrogations were conducted on a daily basis at the Omarska and Keraterm camps. The interrogations were frequently accompanied by beatings. Severe beatings, killings as well as other forms of physical and psychological abuse, including sexual assault, were commonplace at the Omarska and Keraterm camps.
The camp guards and frequent visitors who came to the camps used all types of weapons and instruments to beat and otherwise physically abuse the detainees. In particular, Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat political and civic leaders, intellectuals, the wealthy, and non-Serbs who were considered as extremists or to have resisted the Bosnian Serbs were especially subjected to beatings and mistreatment which often resulted in death. At a minimum, hundreds of detainees, whose identities are known and unknown, did not survive.
In addition, Omarska and Keraterm camps also operated in a manner designed to discriminate and subjugate the non-Serbs by inhumane acts and cruel treatment. These acts included the brutal living conditions imposed on the prisoners. There was a deliberate policy of overcrowding and lack of basic necessities of life, including inadequate food, polluted water, insufficient or non-existent medical care and unhygienic and cramped conditions. The prisoners all suffered serious psychological and physical deterioration and were in a state of constant fear.
After the existence of the Omarska and Keraterm camps became known to the international community, the Bosnian Serb authorities closed the two camps in August 1992 and transferred survivors to remaining facilities, including Trnopolje camp, in Prijedor Municipality and to the ManjaČa camp in the Banja Luka Municipality. From those facilities, almost all of the survivors were eventually forcibly transferred or deported from the area.
