THE HAGUE (AFP) -Four Bosnian Serbs accused of crimes against humanity at detention camps in 1992 went on trial here Monday at the international war crimes tribunal.
Miroslav Kvocka, Milojica Kos, Mlado Radic and Zoran Zigic were accused of persecuting Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs at the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps in the northwest Prijedor region between May 24 and August 30, 1992.
The charges included murder, torture and rape at the camps, where more than 6,000 non-Serb Bosnians were detained during the early months of a three-year civil war after the Serbs took the Prijedor municipality.
The camps, discovered by international forces in 1992, served to highlight the ethnic cleansing carried out by Serb forces in northwest Bosnia.
"Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje sent shockwaves across the world," said U.S. prosecutor Grant Niemann at the start of the trial.
He added that hundreds of Bosnian Croats and Muslims "suffered and died in these camps because of their ethnic background."
Niemann acknowledged the four Bosnian Serbs could argue they had not personally planned or instigated the persecutions, but that orders "came from above."
"But a state has no mind and has no physical possibilities. It is the servant of the state that makes it function or in this case dysfunction," Niemann held.
Kvocka, a 43-year-old former policeman, was a top commander of the Omarska camp where most of the prisoners were Muslim and Croat politicians and intellectuals.
Kos, 36, and Radic, 47, also ex-policemen, were in charge of guard units at the camp. Zigic, 41, was accused of going to the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps "for the purpose of abusing, beating, torturing and killing prisoners," according to the official charges.
Kvocka and Kos, who were arrested in April and May 1998 by international troops sent to Bosnia, each faced four charges of war crimes and four of crimes against humanity.
Radic, detained in April 1998, was also accused of several rapes and sexual assaults. He faces six charges of crimes against humanity and six of war crimes.
Zigic, who gave himself up to the tribunal in April 1998, faces similar charges to Kvocka and Kos. All four have denied the allegations. The international war crimes tribunal, set up in 1993, has so far sentenced two Bosnian Serbs for atrocities committed in the Prijedor region. In January, the tribunal found Dusko Tadic guilty of war crimes in the same three camps. He is now serving a 20-year prison term.
