Account of an event · Omarska · May 1992 – August 1992
Thirty-six women among thousands of men: women detained in the Omarska camp
In 1992, among more than 3,334 detainees in the Omarska camp, there were about thirty-six women, many of whom were well-known figures in the local public life of Prijedor. Five of them did not survive the camp. Two survivors, a former judge and a lawyer from Prijedor, after escaping to Croatia collected testimonies of hundreds of women raped during the war for investigators of the Hague Tribunal.
Where and when
Omarska
- Date
- May 1992 – August 1992
- Place
- Omarska, Trnopolje
- Coordinates
- 44.89° N · 16.90° E
Women in the camp
During 1992, more than 3,334 detainees passed through the Omarska camp in the Prijedor municipality. Among them were about thirty-six women. Many of them were well known in local public life, and among them were judges and lawyers.
One of them was N. S., who from 1978 to 1992 worked as a judge of the municipal court in Prijedor. About two months after Serb forces took over Prijedor, she was taken to Omarska. She was held there for about three months, until the camp was closed in early August 1992. According to the portal genocid.ba, J. C., who before the war had been a lawyer at the court in Prijedor, was also detained in Omarska.
Conditions of detention
According to genocid.ba, the women were held during the day in the restaurant building, and at night they slept in the interrogation rooms. The same source states that they had to clean blood from the walls and floors of those rooms. They were separated from the men's part of the camp, where their husbands, brothers, sons and neighbors were detained.
The Hague Tribunal (ICTY) established in its judgment that some women in Omarska were harassed or raped.
Five women did not survive Omarska. Four were later found in a mass grave, and one is still listed as missing today. Their names are not given.
Transfer to Trnopolje
According to the portal genocid.ba, a few days before the British television ITN visited Omarska on 5 August 1992, the women were transferred to the Trnopolje camp. The exact date of that transfer is not known.
Testimonies and justice
After escaping to Croatia in 1992, N. S. and J. C. began collecting testimonies of hundreds of women raped during the war and preparing materials for ICTY investigators. In doing so, they contributed to rape being prosecuted as a war crime.
On 2 November 2001, the ICTY convicted Mlađo Radić, a shift commander in Omarska, among other things for rape and sexual violence in the camp. The sentence of 20 years' imprisonment was confirmed by the Appeals Chamber on 28 February 2005. Miroslav Kvočka, a commander in Omarska, was also finally convicted before the ICTY.
N. S. testified before the ICTY, including in the proceedings against Radovan Karadžić.
Return to Prijedor
N. S. returned to Prijedor in 1999, and in 2002 she got her pre-war apartment back. According to genocid.ba, she has not been recognized as a victim of war in Republika Srpska. Speaking about meeting the guard against whom she had testified, she said: "He was the first to lower his head."