TWENTY-NINE YEARS SINCE THE CLOSING OF NOTORIOUS CAMP FOR SERBS

HADŽIĆI, JANUARY 27 /SRNA/ - In the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Osenik near Pazarić, a memorial service was held today on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the closing of the Silos concentration camp in Tarčin, outside Sarajevo, where more than 600 Serb civilians were imprisoned, 24 of whom died as a result of physical abuse, beatings and torture.

Archpriest-Stavrophore Miljan Radjenović mentioned the names of all the victims in his prayer, emphasizing that "everyone who lays down his life for Christ will be surrounded by a wreath of glory, so the names of the Serb Silos victims are surrounded by glory." "It is our sacred duty to never consign them to oblivion and to forever remember their sacrifice, which only can be achieved with Serb unity, under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church," said Rađenović. According to earlier testimonies by Serb inmates and officials of Republika Srpska, the Silos prison camp in Tarčin was and remains a symbol of the suffering of the Serb people in the past war, especially if you take into account the date of its creation, the fact of who the prisoners were and how long it existed. Many believe that the entire pre-war municipality of Hadžići was a kind of camp for Serbs, and that the Silos was one of the most notorious, because innocent children, women and elderly people of Serb background perished in that facility. Former Serb prison inmate of the Silos prison camp Đorđo Šuvajlo previously told SRNA that the president of the Muslim municipality of Hadžići Mustafa Đelilović and the commander of the Ninth Mountain Brigade of the so-called Army of BiH, and their associates were directly responsible for the crimes in the Tarčin's Silos. The Silos, as a concentration camp for Serbs, which was managed by the so-called Army of BiH, was opened on May 11, 1992 in a facility where wheat was stored before the war, and was closed on January 27, 1996 on St. Sava Day, i.e. two months after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed. According to the testimony by former prison camp detainees, the Silos had all the elements of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp from World War II. 600 Serb civilians were detained in the Silos, 24 of whom died as a result of physical abuse, beatings and torture. In that camp, one of a total of 126 in the area of wartime Sarajevo, mostly civilians from the area of Tarčin, Pazarić and other nearby places were imprisoned. The youngest among them was fourteen-year-old Leo Kapetanović, and the oldest was Vaso Šarenac, who was more than 85 years old and who died in the Silos at a temperature that was always 10 degrees lower than outside. Even the women, one of whom was six months pregnant, were not spared the torture. Serb camp prisoners who survived horrific torture testified that the then officials in the Government of the so-called RBiH visited the Silos and were informed about the events in the camp. Former Silos camp prisoner Radojka Pandurević told in her earlier testimony for SRNA that Muslim war leader Alija Izetbegović was also near the Silos twice. Death camp inmate the late Slavko Jovičić Slavuj, who is also a former member of the BiH parliament, left the Silos on January 27, 1996. He testified that the Silos camp was a laboratory for testing human endurance, where Muslim soldiers and guards looked at the prisoners as animals who were beaten daily, tortured in various ways, "killed" by hunger and poisoned with various drugs. "Such suffering and torture has never happened to anyone in the world, which the world and modern civilization will never be able to understand," Jovičić said at the time. The prisoners learned about the dissolution of the Silos camp from representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They left the camp on January 26, 1996, while the last 42 prisoners left a day later, which finally closed the doors of this casemate. On November 24, 2011, the police detained several members of the so-called Army of BiH who were suspected of having participated in crimes and persecution of the Serb population in the area of the Sarajevo municipality of Hadžići. On April 19, 2012, the BiH Prosecutor's Office Sarajevo started the trial of eight members of the so-called Army of BiH who are suspected of illegal arrests, torture and killing, inhumane treatment of Serb civilians in the Silos prison camp. The suspects are Mustafa Đelilović, Fadil Čović, Mirsad Šabić, Nezir Kazić, Bećir Hujić, Halid Čović, Šerif Mešanović and Nermin Kalember. There was great interest in this trial, not only by the families of the murdered and injured, but also by the the media in BiH and the region wide. In July 2021, the Court of BiH issued a second-instance verdict in which convicted six people for crimes against civilians, sentencing them to a total of 42 years in prison. The former commander of the Ninth Mountain Brigade of the so-called Army of BiH Nezir Kazić was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the former head of the Public Security Station Hadžići Fadil Čović and the former warden of the Silos prison camp in Tarčin /until August 1994/ Bećir Hujić were sentenced to eight years in prison. Commander of the Police Statioion Pazarić Mirsad Šabić was sentenced to six years, while the former manager of the Silos prison camp /since August 1994/ Halid Čović and the former guard in this camp Nermin Kalember were sentenced to five years each. Six of them were convicted of illegal detention and inhumane treatment of civilians of Serb and Croat background detained in the Silos prison camp, the Krupa barracks in Zovik and the May 9 elementary school in Pazarić, as well as for denying the right to a trial and taking civilians to forced labour.