COURTSIDE: Brdjanin Case

Former Omarska inmate Nusret Sivac told the court that a delegation of ARK officials - including politicians from Banja Luka and Prijedor - visited the camp in the summer of 1992. On that occasion, camp commander Zeljko Meakic, “reported in usual military manner to the most important member of the delegation – Radoslav Brdjanin”.

The witness said that he was a correspondent of TV Sarajevo before the war and, as a result, he knew the key figures in ARK and Prijedor political life.

Brdjanin maintains that he never visited Omarska - and had no knowledge of the crimes allegedly committed in the camps around Prijedor.

But the witness claimed that the camps were “organised and maintained” by the police and civilian authorities of Prijedor - both subordinated to the regional crisis staff for ARK, which was headed by Brdjanin.

Sivac described in detail the day when the delegation visited the camp. Assistant commander Milorad “Brk” Tadic had lined the inmates up and forced them to rehearse Serb nationalist songs, offer a serbian salute to the delegation and chant “This is Serbia”.

“This was very humiliating. We had to offend our own nation,” he said. “The politicians found it very amusing and laughed as they watched the whole scene. Brdjanin even spoke to us, but I could not hear a word because of the noise.”

The inmates were showing visible traces of torture and ill-treatment during Brjanin’s visit, the witness claimed.

After leaving the camp, Sivac said he once saw the defendant on TV Banja Luka, where he allegedly congratulated the Prijedor crisis staff on the successsful cleansing and added that “all the Turks who stay in ARK will shake in their boots”.

Brdjanin's lawyer John Ackerman tried to discredit the witness by highlighting a statement Sivac gave in 1994, where he said that ARK president Vojo Kupresanin had been among the delegation, whereas in a statement given in 2001 he had indentified the man as Stojan Zupljanin.

“I mistook one for another, and I corrected my statement,” said Sivac. “But I knew Brdjanin well and I saw him very clearly in Omarska.”

Vjera Bogati is an IWPR correspondent in The Hague and a journalist with SENSE news agency.