DATE=3/6/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=YUGOSLAVIA / WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL UPDATE (L ONLY)
NUMBER=2-259876
BYLINE=LAUREN COMITEAU
DATELINE=THE HAGUE
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: A Bosnian Serb man detained Sunday by British
peacekeeping forces in Bosnia is in the Netherlands
for trial by the Yugoslav war crimes. Tribunal. As
Lauren Comiteau reports from The Hague, Dragoljub
Prcac faces charges that date back to the ethnic
cleansing of Muslims from northwestern Bosnia eight
years ago.
TEXT: Prosecutors say the Bosnian Serb suspect,
Dragoljub Prcac, was second in command at the Omarska
prison camp.
It was one of three camps where prosecutors say
thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats suffered or
died. Prosecutors say the prisoners were victims of a
well-planned policy of persecution aimed at driving
non-Serbs from the Prijedor region of Bosnia.
And prosecutor Grant Nieman says the camps' commanders
-- like Dragoljub Prcac -- were the people who helped
make it happen.
/// NIEMAN ACT ONE ///
The Bosnian Serb authorities called Omarska a
collection center. However, the evidence will
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Omarska was
a prison camp and an interrogation center, a
place where murder, torture, rape and other
cruel and inhuman treatment were a daily
occurrence.
/// END ACT ///
Prosecutor Niemann has already started presenting
evidence against four other men originally charged in
the same indictment as Mr. Prcac -- three Omarska camp
commanders and another man who Mr. Niemann says
entered the camps to harass, torture and kill.
At the start of their hearing last week, Prosecutor
Niemann described conditions at Omarska.
/// NIEMAN ACT TWO ///
Open-space was so limited, that in some
instances prisoners couldn't even sit or lie
down. Detainees could not move at all unless
they received permission, explicitly, to use the
toilet or to eat. Often, guards beat them
savagely on their way to use the toilet, so many
preferred to defecate in their clothing rather
than to risk this (punishment).
/// END ACT ///
If Mr. Prcac had been arrested earlier, he would be
standing trial today with his alleged co-conspirators.
He now will be tried separately for similar crimes.
Or he could be tried with two other suspects who still
are at large -- if the two other men are arrested.
Prosecution spokesman Paul Risley hailed Sunday's
arrest of Mr. Prcac by British peacekeeping troops as
another sign of the tribunal's growing success in
going after high-ranking officials.
Last week, the court sentenced Croatian General
Tihomir Blaskic to 45 years in prison for commanding
troops that committed war crimes. And next week, a
top commander in the Bosnian Serb army, General
Radislav Krstic, goes on trial for his role in the
massacre of Muslims following the fall of Srebrenica
in 1995.
Mr. Risley says the arrest of Mr. Prcac is the most
recent example of the tribunal's progress. It is the
second arrest by NATO-led forces this year, and Mr.
Risley says it shows that such high-level detentions
are becoming regular and routine. (Signed)
NEB/LC/JWH/KL
06-Mar-2000 11:16 AM EDT (06-Mar-2000 1616 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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