Lakic Djorovic, who used to be the army-appointed defence lawyer for Croats detained in concentration camps in Serbia in 1991 and 1992, told the Serbian NIN weekly that tens of people had been killed and hundreds of inmates were tortured in those camps and that the then military and state leadership in Belgrade knew about those crimes.
Djorovic, who was an officer in the legal services in the now defunct Yugoslav People Army (JNA), said that concentration camps had been set up in Begejci and Stajicevo and Sremska Mitrovica contrary to the Geneva conventions on prisoners of war.
According to him, the crucial question is why the army had not punished perpetrators of those war crimes in the camps and why everything has been shrouded in silence for 20 years.
In Begejci and Stajicevo those who were suspected of serious criminal offences were separated and exposed to brutal torture in order to give confessions, Djorovic said.
Camp guards and officials were standing by them and ordered them (POWs) what to write down, beat them with truncheons, Djorovic said adding that after this procedure those "suspects" were sent before military tribunals in Belgrade or Nis.
He said that those who tortured prisoners of war or who connived at such behaviour are still high-ranking military or state officials in Serbia.
Speaking about the Sremska Mitrovica camp which he visited in February 1992, he said that he had been shocked seeing conditions in which the Croats were detained.
According to him 1,800 Croatians were kept in a cramped space with many of them having broken noses and jaws and blood-stained bandages on their heads. The detainees were mainly in civilian clothes, and some of them had yellow boots and he was later told that those were fighters from Croatia's forces.
Djorovic said that he had informed prosecutors of the the Hague-based UN tribunal about that "but the silence has been lasting for 20 years".
