Personal testimony · Omarska · April 30, 1992 – August 6, 1992
Ante Tomić from Ljubija: beaten unconscious and thrown among the dead in Omarska
Ante Tomić, a Bosnian Croat and miner from Ljubija, was arrested on the night of 13–14 June 1992 and spent almost three weeks in the Keraterm camp, followed by more than a month in Omarska, where he was beaten into a four-day unconsciousness and thrown onto a pile of dead bodies. He survived and in 2001 testified before the Hague Tribunal in the proceedings against the Keraterm commanders.
Where and when
Omarska
- Date
- April 30, 1992 – August 6, 1992
- Coordinates
- 44.89° N · 16.90° E
Ljubija in the spring of 1992
In 1992 Ante Tomić was 34 years old. He was a Bosnian Croat from Ljubija in the Prijedor municipality, a town where Croats made up roughly half of the population, and he worked in the Omarska mines. He got along well with his neighbors of all nationalities.
On the evening of 30 April 1992, the police in Ljubija closed the café and declared a curfew. That was how Tomić learned that the SDS had taken power in Prijedor.
On 24 May he heard that an attack on Donja Ljubija was being prepared and set off there with friends who were Serbs, Croats and Muslims. They were stopped by members of the Territorial Defense. By mid-June Ljubija was completely cut off: the telephones did not work and the buses did not run. "We were completely isolated," Tomić said.
Arrest and the Keraterm camp
On the night of 13–14 June 1992, two Serb soldiers, his neighbors, came to his apartment. Together with about ten Muslim and Croat men aged 16 to 60, he was taken to the Keraterm camp. One of those taken away had been beaten and was barefoot, another was in pajamas.
In Keraterm he was held for almost three weeks in Room 2, together with about 400 people. He was never interrogated and was never told why he was detained. The detainees had to sort belongings looted from burned villages.
Tomić testified about the violence he witnessed. Emsud Bahonjić died a day or two after being kicked by Dušan Knežević "Duća", who was later convicted by a final judgment. A seventeen-year-old youth of Albanian nationality and two Albanian pastry makers were beaten. Jovan Radočaj, a Serb, was beaten and killed the same night; according to Tomić's testimony, as he was leaving he said: "It's all over." The Ljubija policemen Drago Tokmadžić and Esad Islamović were beaten; Tokmadžić died, while Islamović survived and was transferred to a hospital. Among those who beat them was Zoran Žigić, later convicted by a final judgment.
Milan Ćurguz "Krivi" brought detainees to the camp, but at the same time also helped them. He was killed – according to Tomić, precisely because of that help. His brother Pero Ćurguz, a Red Cross worker, first told Tomić that Serbs had killed Milan, and then claimed on Banja Luka television that Muslims had killed him.
According to Tomić's estimate, about ten people were killed during his stay in Keraterm.
Omarska
On 4 July 1992, Tomić was transferred to the Omarska camp together with 115 other men from Ljubija. He described it as a place without rules and without human dignity, where guards and visitors beat detainees at any time. According to his estimate, at least 10 to 15 detainees were killed in Omarska every day.
On one occasion he was beaten so severely that he lay unconscious for four days. Guards threw him onto a pile of dead bodies, where a fellow detainee found him alive. According to his testimony, on the worst night he was beaten by one guard together with up to seven others. The commander in the Omarska camp was Miroslav Kvočka, later convicted by a final judgment.