Nusreta Sivac: a judge from Prijedor who survived Omarska and testified in The Hague

A judge in Prijedor

Nusreta Sivac was born on 18 February 1951 in Prijedor. From 1978 she worked as a judge of the Municipal Court in Prijedor.

After the takeover of power in Prijedor in April 1992, Bosnian Serb soldiers told her that she no longer worked at the court. This ended her many years of service as a judge.

Being taken to Omarska

On 9 June 1992 she was summoned to the police station. Instead of being questioned, she was driven to the Omarska camp, which was run by the Bosnian Serb army and police. According to testimonies, among the thousands of men detained in Omarska there were 37 women, most of whom were held in interrogation rooms.

According to testimony, the women had to clean blood from the walls and floors of the interrogation rooms. Nusreta Sivac testified that every morning she saw the bodies of murdered men in front of the building. The women in the camp were subjected to repeated sexual violence and beatings.

Hiding the women before a visit

On 5 August 1992, before the visit of the Red Cross and ITN journalists, the women were transferred to Trnopolje, and the camp administration claimed that there were no women in Omarska. Five women from Omarska did not survive the camp; four were found in a mass grave, and one has not been found to this day.

The road to justice

At the end of 1992, Nusreta Sivac arrived in Zagreb. There, together with Jadranka Cigelj, a former colleague from the Prijedor court who had also survived Omarska, she began documenting the crimes and gathering testimonies.

In June 1995 both were invited to The Hague to help prepare the first indictments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Their work contributed to rape being recognised as a war crime.

Nusreta Sivac testified before the ICTY several times, including in the trial of Radovan Karadžić. According to sources, her testimony contributed to the conviction of an Omarska guard who had abused her. According to testimony, that guard was released after serving two thirds of his sentence.

Return to Prijedor

In 1999 Nusreta Sivac returned to Prijedor, and in 2002 she got her apartment back. According to her, after returning she met the released guard, and he was the first to lower his head.

In an interview published by the AP agency on 8 March 2013, on International Women's Day, she spoke about her contribution to the recognition of rape as a war crime. About the pursuit of justice she said: "It is slow, very slow, but it is a beginning."