“I use pills when I go to bed and when I get up,” says 64-year-old Milojka Antic, a former prisoner of the Celebici war camp. She spent 77 days in that village, not far from Konjic, in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
Until 1992, Milojka lived in the village of Idbar, inhabited by a majority Bosniak population. She was a victim of members of the Territorial Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, along with 240 other Serbs from several villages in the vicinity of Konjic, about sixty kilometers from Sarajevo.
Among the members of the Territorial Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs was Kemal Mrndzic, a former camp supervisor who was arrested on May 17th in Boston in the United States (U.S.).
The camp was located in the hangars of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA).
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found that the guards of the Celebici camp committed numerous murders, and rapes, and engaged in torture and other forms of persecution of Serbian prisoners in the camp.
Two years and five months in the camp.
Slobodan Mrkajic was also in the Celebici camp. He was arrested on May 25th, 1992. He was, as he says, in seven camps on the territory of Herzegovina for two years and five months.
“I’m situated now, but I don’t have any nerves, my ribs are missing, I’m also missing my teeth that they pulled out, and others were slaughtered and shot in the forehead. That’s a problem. And now imagine, the one who kicked me, he can pay the bail. How can I be satisfied if life and ribs are paid for by bail, how?” asks Slobodan, alluding to the fact that the arrested Kemal Mrndzic, after his first appearance before the federal court in the U.S., was released on May 17th on bail of 30.000 dollars.
Who is Kemal Mrndzic?
According to court documents, after the end of the war, ICTY investigators spoke with Kemal Mrndzic in Sarajevo and allegedly accused him of being involved in the crimes in Celebici.
Mrndzic then came up with a plan to escape the country by crossing the border into Croatia and allegedly applying as a refugee to the U.S. using a fictitious story, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the U.S., he was charged with forgery, concealment of material facts from the U.S. government, use of a fraudulently obtained passport, and possession and use of a fraudulently obtained certificate of naturalization and a fraudulently obtained social security card, the U.S. Department of Justice announced, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
