The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced on Saturday that it has filed an indictment against five high-ranking commanders of the Republika Srpska army, suspected of war crimes in a village near the northwestern Bosnian city of Prijedor in 1992.
The indictment states that the five commanders of the Republika Srpska army: Veljko Brajić, Slobodan Taranjec, Ranko Kaurin, Branko Djenopoljec, and Draško Topić, participated in the armed artillery and infantry attack on the unprotected village of Briševo, as well as the towns around Prijedor, mainly inhabited by the Croatian population, at the end of July 1992.
“At that time, within just a few hours, 61 people were killed, including the youngest being a 16-year-old boy, while the oldest victim was 81 years old, as well as a minor victim of Bosnian nationality. Three people disappeared, and their remains have not been found to this day,” the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina said in the media statement.
Some victims were sexually assaulted and abused during the attack, and dozens of people, mainly men, were sent to the Prijedor camps, according to the indictment.
Some victims died during transport, and at least three conspirators brought from Briševo were killed in the Omarska camp.
“During the attack, religious and civilian buildings were destroyed and burned, and the surviving civilian population from the settlement of Briševo and other nearby settlements was forcibly displaced from that area, around 350 civilians,” according to the indictment.
The bodies of a large number of victims were found, exhumed, and identified during the years 1997, 1998, and 2001.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina will prove the charges by calling 143 witnesses, of which five witnesses will testify under protective measures, two experts, and by submitting more than 300 pieces of material evidence.
In Prijedor and the surrounding cities, 3,176 people were killed.
Around 30,000 non-Serb nationals passed through the Trnopolje, Omarska, and Keraterm camps in Prijedor.
For the crimes in Prijedor, according to information from the victims’ association, about 50 full-fledged judgments have been issued, and sentences totaling around 800 years in prison have been pronounced.
Eleven people were convicted in The Hague, and four others in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina after their case was transferred from the Hague Tribunal to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.


