For Bosniak detainees in the Zvornik area of eastern Bosnia, particularly the Cultural Centre in Celopek, Eid al-Adha 1992 was a period of torture and sexual abuse.
The mistreatment began with the arrival of the Yellow Wasps paramilitary unit, led by two brothers known as ‘Repic’ and ‘Zuco’.
The 2016 verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb police officers Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin found that, “on June 11, 1992, during the Muslim holiday of Eid, Repic came to the Cultural Center” and that one of his men, nicknamed ‘Pufta’, beat a detainee, who later died.
“Repic then forced all detainees to strip naked… and to engage in sexual acts with one another, including penetration with a broom handle,” the verdict states. “At one point members of the paramilitary unit also ‘assisted.’… Members of the paramilitary unit also cut off detainees’ fingers and carved crosses into their foreheads and backs using a handmade curved knife. In this way they abused and killed several men.”
A former detainee at the Celopek Cultural Centre previously told BIRN: “After seven days that group arrived – ‘Zoks,’ ‘Pufta.’ The first day they immediately started… The next day ‘Repic’ came. I will remember him for the rest of my life; he was the most bloodthirsty. He made lists of fathers, sons, brothers.”
Detainees were taken onto the stage of the cultural centre while others were made to watch, the survivor told BIRN. He said that Repic killed six or seven detainees, shooting them in the head with a small-calibre rifle.
“We all had to strip naked,” the former detainee recalled. “Whoever they inspected was sent onto the stage. They forced us to sexually satisfy one another. Everyone had to do it. That ‘Pufta’ took a knife and pierced muscles. He ordered some men to place their hands on the wooden stage and stabbed through them, cut off two men’s fingers, another man’s ear, and another man’s genital organ.”
According to trial judgements, two prisoners were forced to load the dead onto a truck and then one of them had to remain in the vehicle. The remains of that person were exhumed from a mass grave in the Crni Vrh area in July 2003.
According to BIRN’s mass grave database, hundreds of human remains were exhumed in the Crni Vrh area that year, including those of people killed at the Celopek Cultural Centre.
