Account of an event · Omarska · July 11, 1992 – July 12, 1992
Petrovdan in Omarska, 1992: The Night of Fire According to Detainees' Testimonies
In the summer of 1992, on the night around the Orthodox holiday of Petrovdan, guards at the Omarska camp near Prijedor, according to detainees' testimonies, set a pile of tires on fire and called out prisoners by name from the hangar. Survivors testified that people were driven to run around the fire and thrown into the flames. The number of victims that night has never been established.
Where and when
Omarska
- Date
- July 11, 1992 – July 12, 1992
- Coordinates
- 44.89° N · 16.90° E
The Omarska Camp
At the end of May 1992, the Crisis Staff of the Prijedor municipality made the decision to establish the Omarska camp. More than 3,000 detained Bosniak and Croat civilians passed through the camp, among them 37 women.
The Night Around Petrovdan
In July 1992, while the camp was in operation, the Orthodox holiday of Petrovdan fell. The sources do not state the exact date of the event consistently. According to a protected witness who testified before the Court of BiH in the case of Mejakić et al., everything took place on the night before Petrovdan, 11 July 1992. According to other testimonies, cited by the portal genocid.ba, the guards lit the fire on Petrovdan itself.
According to detainees' testimonies, the guards set a pile of car tires on fire in the camp compound and called out prisoners by name from the first rooms of the hangar. Those who remained inside heard screams, and according to the testimonies, women's voices were among them. One surviving detainee recounted: "Then I smelled the stench of burned flesh." According to the testimonies, that smell mixed with the fumes of the burning rubber.
Some detainees testified that they saw the guards force prisoners to run around a large fire and throw them into it. A protected witness before the Court of BiH stated that "drunken guards were burning people." He did not see the burning himself, but he heard the screaming and smelled the burning.
The Morning After
The following morning, according to the same protected witness, traces of burned tires were visible near the "Bijela kuća" (White House). According to the testimony of a female witness, a large FAP truck loaded with dead bodies stood in the camp that morning.
How many people were killed that night has not been established. According to the portal genocid.ba, Mirko Ješić, a senior inspector of the State Security Service at the camp, confirmed before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that 18 prisoners were killed in mid-July.
Genocide researcher Hikmet Karčić, author of the book Torture, Humiliate, Kill, describes this event as a ritual crime linked to a religious holiday, through which, according to the perpetrators' notion, "demons were to be driven out." The crimes in Omarska were also written about by historian Jasmin Medić of the Institute for History of the University of Sarajevo in the book "Otac, čuvaj mi djecu".
The Closing of the Camp and the Court Epilogue
The camp was closed in August 1992, after a visit by foreign journalists; according to the portal genocid.ba, on 21 August 1992. According to the same source, 458 detainees were killed in Omarska, among them five women.
Željko Mejakić, according to the indictment the de facto commander of the Omarska camp, was convicted by a final judgment before the Court of BiH for crimes in the camp. On 16 July 2009, the Appellate Panel of the Court of BiH upheld his sentence of 21 years of imprisonment.