Omarska Camp - Overview

Overview

The camp existed from about 25 May to about 21 August 1992, where the Serb military and police unlawfully segregated, detained and confined some of more than 7,000 Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats captured in the ethnic cleansing of the municipality of Prijedor. Bosnian Serb authorities termed it an "investigation centre" and the detainees were accused for alleged "paramilitary activities".

By the end of 1992, the war would result in the death or forced departure of most of the Bosniak and Croat population of Prijedor municipality; about 7,000 people were missing from a population of 25,000, and there are 145 mass graves and hundreds of individual graves in the extended region. There is, however, conflicting information about how many people were killed at this camp. According to the survivors, usually about 30 and sometimes as many as 150 men were singled-out and killed in the camp every night. The U.S. State Department and other governments believe that, at a minimum, hundreds of detainees, whose identities are known and unknown, did not survive; many others were killed during the evacuation of the camps in the area.