On September 19, 2003, Federation of BiH authorities prevented the Association of Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska from placing a memorial plaque at the former Viktor Bubanj military barracks in Sarajevo in remembrance of thousands of Serbs who were detained there and around 500 who, according to the Association, were killed while the facility operated as a wartime detention camp.
Former detainees have written books describing alleged crimes and abuse at Viktor Bubanj. After the war, the complex became the seat of the Court of BiH following a decision imposed by then High Representative Paddy Ashdown.
Strahinja Živak spent two and a half years in Viktor Bubanj and Sarajevo Central Prison before being released in November 1994.
He was under investigation for eight months and, following numerous interrogations, was charged on the basis of what he described as a coerced statement and without witnesses with allegedly having “influence in the division of BiH.”
Živak said that throughout his detention he slept on concrete and shared a six-square-meter room with 16 other people. He also claimed that he had no effective legal protection during his trial.
In his book I Live to Bear Witness, Živak described severe abuse, sexual violence and killings of Serb detainees.
“There were women in the prison as well. Through the bars, I saw 33 women being taken out for walks. There were pregnant women and entire families. One girl with an intellectual disability was terribly abused, while they accused her of being a sniper. The police officers would drink in the evenings and, after 10 p.m., take the women away,” Živak wrote.
In the years following the war, former detainees gave numerous testimonies describing the treatment they said they endured at Viktor Bubanj.
These accounts include allegations that prisoners were beaten with rifle butts, military boots, baseball bats and even rough wooden boards.
Women also testified that they were forcibly taken from Viktor Bubanj to Hotel Zagreb in central Sarajevo, which they described as a place where female detainees were subjected to sexual violence.
Serb prisoners also reported being taken to mock executions before being returned to their cells and told that they would be “killed tomorrow.”
Accounts of abuse and killings at Viktor Bubanj have also come from individuals who were connected to wartime institutions in Sarajevo.
Marko Mikerević, who was mobilized during the war to serve as a lay judge at the District Military Court in Sarajevo, claimed in his book Sarajevo Cauldrons of Death that prominent figures in the Bosniak wartime political leadership were aware of crimes committed at the detention facility.
In the book, published in November 2004, Mikerević accused Amor Mašović, then head of the Federation of BiH Commission for Missing Persons, of asking the camp’s management and guards specifically for the bodies of deceased detainees so they could allegedly be exchanged with the Serb side for captured Muslim fighters.
Mašović publicly rejected these allegations. According to the report, it is not known whether investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH ever questioned him in connection with the accusations.
According to Mikerević’s account, Alija Izetbegović, Ejup Ganić, Mustafa Cerić, Rasim Delić, Sefer Halilović, Dragan Vikić and other senior political and military officials from wartime Sarajevo frequently visited the facility.
Source: RTRS
