A concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth at any point in time for over the past 100 years. [1] Technological developments in the latter half of the 1800s, specifically barbed wire and automatic weapons, made it possible for large groups of people to be imprisoned in a camp. [2] Camps were used prolifically as a tool of war throughout Bosnia and even in Croatia and were the sites of some of the most inhumane and inconceivable acts of violence. Some of the first camps were set up in the area of Prijedor in northern Bosnia to imprison non-Serb civilians. 

As of 1991, the population of Prijedor was nearly evenly represented by Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs. Muslims represented 44 percent of the population of Prijedor, Serbs were 42.5 percent, and Croats 5.6 percent. [3]

Controlling the Prijedor municipality was one of the Bosnian Serb army’s first priorities because the area carved a supply line from Serbia through Bosnia and into the Serb-majority area in southern Croatia. [4] The Bosnian Serb army reached its objective within several weeks. 

During the early morning hours of April 30, 1992, the Bosnian Serb army swiftly took over Prijedor without firing one shot. [5] One month later, the army implemented a blockade around Kozarac, an area with roughly 30,000 people, shelled homes of Bosnian Muslims and Croatians, and burned their houses down. [6] Within four days half the down was destroyed. [7] After an unsuccessful attempt to fight back, all non-Serbs remaining in the town were ordered to hang a white sheet outside their homes to surrender. This flag also marked their fate to be imprisoned in a camp and, for men, likely death. [8]

Men were detained in camps at Keraterm and Omarska. Women and the elderly were taken to a camp at Trnopolje. [9] The Omarska camp, which held as many as 3,000 prisoners at one time, was located at an iron-ore mine about a mile south of the town of the same name. [10] Although the camp was only in operation for about three months from May 25, 1992 until the end of August, the most brutal acts of all three camps occurred here. Both men and women prisoners were subjected to torture and sexual violence, starved, deprived of lavatories, and confined to locations without ventilation in summer heat. [11]   

In August 1992, Radovan Karadžić, President of the Republika Srpska and a name synonymous with war crimes, either in denial about the existence of concentration camps or at least the dire conditions at the camps, authorized a few British journalists to visit the Omarska camp. In the days following the journalists’ visit when the conditions were made known to the international community, prisoners were transferred to other camps or killed. [12]

One group of Muslims and Croats who were held in the camps were loaded on a bus, driven to a discreet location, and told to line of up on the edge of a cliff where they were executed. In 2017, 86 of these victims were found in a mass grave in central Bosnia. On July 27, 2019, after the use of DNA technology to identify the victims, they were finally laid to rest. At least 650 people who were held in the camps are still missing. [13]

Detention at the camps, as well as an escalating humanitarian crisis in other parts of Bosnia, prompted the United Nations to appoint a Commission of Experts to investigate. The outcome of this investigation, in part, led the UN Security Council to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on May 25, 1993 for the “sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1 January 1991” and a date to be determined when peace has been restored. [14] The ICTY was the first international criminal tribunal since WWII and the first court established by the United Nations. 

The first trial heard by ICTY was the case against Dusko Tadic for crimes committed at the camps in Prijedor. In addition to other crimes, Tadic was convicted of aiding and abetting sexual violence and mutilation against men. This was the first of many trials that applied and developed international law relating to use of sexual violence as a tool of conflict. 

The court in Tadic also established that the important mode of criminal liability called joint criminal enterprise can be applied to hold individuals accountable for crimes that they did not personally carry out. This is an important principle in international law because international crimes, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, are typically a product not of single individuals but of “collective criminality.” Even though only some members of the group may carry out the criminal act, individuals who planned and facilitated the commission of the crime are equally as guilty. To read about another mode of liability applied to individuals who did not personally commit a crime, go to Čelebići in Central Bosnia. 

In all, seventeen individuals were convicted at the ICTY of crimes committed in the Prijedor municipality and more individuals were convicted at local war crimes courts in Bosnia. 

The iron-ore mine on the site of the Omarska camp is still in operation and access is closed to the public. Based on an aerial view, all buildings that formed the Omarska camp remain standing. 

Travel Tip

Prijedor is the largest city in its municipality and Kozarac and many other small towns are nearby. This article, as with many on this site, is intended to provide important information about significant historical facts to give meaning and context when you visit the region. Even though Prijedor may only be a place you will drive through, knowing what happened in Prijedor helps to provide the full story of the 1990s conflict and its impact on international criminal law and the people of Bosnia.