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Quote by Aida Mandic

“Bosniak civilians were forced to flee their homes due to the constant shelling and army attacks by May 1992. Most of the civilians were taken as prisoners or surrendered to the Serb forces. The residents were then gathered and moved to the prison camps operated by the Serb forces in the surrounding area. Within 3 weeks of the hostile takeover of the government entities, the Serb forces mounted large scale military offense and subsequently started rounding up civilians and moving them to the Omarska camp. The Bosnian Serb forces operated the Omarska concentration camp to torture, murder, rape, and abuse captured Bosnian civilians, intellectuals, and politicians in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina (Prijedor municipality). The camp held over 7,000 innocent Bosnian civilians as prisoners for more than five months during 1992. Several hundred people died due to constant abuse by the Serb forces including mass executions, starvation, beatings, repeated sexual abuse, and horrifying living conditions. The camp guards frequently cut the throats of the Bosniak captives. Prisoners ate spoiled food found by scavenging for it.”

Quote by Aida Mandic

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Aida Mandic

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“In one of the camp buildings, victims were squeezed together in extremely horrific conditions, with some rooms holding more than 45 people in very small closet sized rooms. They were even forced to clean the torture rooms. The prisoners’ faces were broken and mutilated from torture. Their blood stained the walls with pieces of skin and hair spread all around. The guards at the camp targeted the kidneys and hearts of the Bosniak victims when beating them to death. Prisoners were frequently beaten with spiked metal weapons and sticks, rifle butts, brass knuckles etc. They were “packed like sardines” with unbearable heat. In addition, they also died from suffocation due to a lack of oxygen during the night. Several survivors testified that they heard constant and intense wailing from people being beaten. They were in a state of endless fear. There are documented cases of prisoners being burned alive by setting tires ablaze around them. Prisoners were made to carry the dead bodies to trucks for disposal. Mass dead bodies were also bulldozed onto trucks. Every night, gunshots could be heard until dawn during mass executions. There were mounds of corpses everywhere on the camp, and Serb forces frequently shot ammunition into the bodies to ensure death.”

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