TO THE COMMITTEE FOR COMPILING DATA ON CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST HUMANITY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
TORTURE IN THE
CAMPS FOR SERBS IN THE FORMER BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
The present Report, which provides a summary of certain medical findings,
covers all the detainees examined by a team of physicians of the Medical
Faculty in
Medical examinations were performed at the
Serb victims of Croato-Muslim detention camps were examined
The data presented here must be interpreted very tentatively, as a rather
small number of detainees have been examined by the above Team relative to the
total number of detainees. The examined victims agreed to undergo examination
on a voluntary basis,reported
of their own free will on their discomfort and made observations which we have
reported on. In our talks with them, we established that a large number of
detainees did not wish to recall the period they had spent in the camps, nor to undergo medical examination. This applied in
particular to raped women. Complying with the humane and ethical principles of
our profession, we have not referred to such cases in our report. Thus,the report covers only 2
cases of women who have spent a while in detention camps (in
All victims who have been examined by the Team have also been photographed
following personal identification (identity cards, passports, refugee cards,
military service cards).
Apart from forensic-medical-neuropsychiatric
examinations, additional examinations have been carried out as well (X-ray
examinations and check-ups and findings by physicians specializing in other
medical fields). In the preparation of the final written expert opinions,
medical documents provided by the patients have also been made use of.
Examinations were carried out on the basis of previously structured
questionnaires in compliance with relevant international standards.
MEDICAL
FINDINGS
A total of 92 detainees have been examined: 2 at Brcko;
18 in Samac; 22 in Trebinje;
22 in Derventa; 2 in Jajce;
8 in Zvornik; 17 in Modrica
and a detainee from
The length of stay at a camp is shown in the chart. The data were
disaggregated according to the number of days spent in detention. However,
these numbers below must be taken with a certain reservation as most detainees
were unable to give precise information on the duration of their stay there.
The length of stay in camps in days
N - 92
Up to 31 days 10
Between 31 and 60 days 29
Between 91 - 180 days 30
Between 181 and 365 days 15
Up to 365 days 8
Effects of inflicted injuries
as evidence of torture
a) Neuropsychiatric effects
Any research into the long-term physical and psycho-social effects of
torture of persons held captive by the enemy in the course of the on-going
Yugoslav civil war calls certainly for a comprehensive prospective study. This
follows primarily from the fact that over 45 % of respondents examined by the
Team within the framework of the activities of the War Crimes Committee have -
as a result of torture they had been subjected to by the enemy in the course of
their captivity during the current Yugoslav civil war - developed a post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), of a chronical nature and
with frequent complications in the form of major depression and suicidal
thoughts, drastic psycho-social consequences and grave effects on their
corporal health (see the chart on the neurological and psychiatric effects
of torture).
Neurological and psychiatric
effects of torture
N - 92
Without any neurological or psychiatric effects 7
Neurological effects only 12
Psychiatric effects only 47
Both neurological and psychiatric effects 26
b) Corporal
effects
The tables and charts on corporal (physical) effects show the total number
of effects on the examined detainees by body parts established impartially by
our examinations. These effects have been classified under the following
headings: scars on the skin; bone scars; deformities (deficiencies,
disfigurements); and missing teeth.
Corporal effects of torture
N - 92
Without any scars/missing teeth/deformities 4
Scars on the skin/missing teeth 51
Scars + deformities/disfigurement 37
In addition, it is particularly important to recognize the fairly
established number of the effects corporal traumas had on specific parts of the
body. In this context, we wish to mention that the established number of chest injuries are not absolute, i.e. do not
correspond to the number of established rib fractures. Namely, in all cases
with rib fractures where no visible scars or deformities could be observed, we
only noted that the examined person had suffered one chest injury, although
their X-ray findings pointed to multiple rib fractures on one or even on both
sides.
Head
3 and more scars - 17 %
2 scars - 10 %
1 scar - 33 %
no scars -
40 %
Number of scars confirming
torture and their distribution N - 92
No scars 1 scar 2 scars 3 scars and over
Head
Neck
Chest
Stomach
Arm
Leg
Genitals
Methods and means of torture
Numerous research findings (Moric-Petrovic et al.,
1963; United Nations, 1985; Turner, S., Gorst-Unsworth,
C., 1990) have shown the worst psycho-traumatic experience to be the one
deriving from stressors of human design and causing in the victim a state of
intensive anxiety, terror and helplessness. The prototype of such experience is
torture to which victims are subjected in captivity. Torture is here
defined in conformity with the criteria contained in the relevant United
Nations conventions on torture and other cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment
and punishment (United Nations, 1985). We believe that the distinctive and
destructive nature of this experience is adequately exemplified by the list of
methods and means of torture which, according to their own reports, the
examined persons had experienced or seen (classification of the methods of
torture into physical, mental and combined is given tentatively and adopted
primarily for reasons of clarity; by activating the tress mechanism, each
torture, basically, affects all personality aspects):
1. M e t h o d o f t o r t u r e
A. Corporal (or mostly corporal):
1. Beatings
with different objects, hitting, kicking and punching on all parts of the body;
2. Kicking
with a heavy soldier’s boot or with a solid object always the same place (most
often knee, elbow, head or sole of foot);
3. Tying
by the wrists and/or legs and beating with fists, heavy soldier’s boots, butt
of a rifle, gun handle, hammer, truncheons, flogging with wire or with iron
bars of all body parts including head and genitals;
4. Firing
of blank cartridges into the anus of the victim (death occurs 5 to 6 hours
later with grave meteorism and as a result of
internal hemorrhage);
5. Smashing
the victim’s head against the wall;
6. Hours-long
suspension by the wrists or legs with and without simultaneous beating or rape
7. Forcible
pouring of petrol or salty water into the victim’s mouth;
8. Forcible
"bathing" with the use of fire-fighting hoses at close range.
9. Tying
of victims to a tree in wintertime and pouring ice-cold water on them until
they freeze
10. Forcing
victims to stand motionless in the sun for several hours in summertime
11. Causing
burns with the use of welding torches, red-hot tongs and with other red-hot
objects
12. Causing
skin burns by suddenly turning on hot water during bathing
13. Putting
out cigarettes by pressing them against the victim’s body,
14. Putting
out butts in the victims mouth
15. Forcing
victims to eat pebbles or chew broken glass
16. Putting
a helmet on the victim’s head and hitting it with different objects
17. Tying
the victim’s genitals to his ears with an electric wire and turning on
electricity or flogging the victim on the back
18. Nailing
the victim’s two hands to a board with a hammer and forcing the victim to walk
around like that for a whole day
19. Enucleation of a part of the victim’s body (a testis or an
eye) and forcing the victim to swallow it;
20. Making
cuts in the victim’s body, esp
on the neck or genitals (often sprinkling salt on created "pockets")
21. Tearing
the victim’s skin off and sprinkling salt on the wounds
22. Knocking
out teeth
23. Gouging
eyes with fingers or with a knife
24. "Stereo"
torture (the torturer causes ear-drum popping in the victim by punching him
simultaneously on his ears with both fists in kid gloves or without gloves)
25. Forcible
pushing of objects into the victim’s anus, mouth, eyes, nose or ears
26. Shooting
the victim with a firearm at close range
27. Giving
injections of petrol or a salty solution
28. Starving
the victim by not giving him anything to eat for several days
29. Torturing
the victim with thirst especially in summertime by giving him salted food
30. Tying
the genitals with a metal wire and stretching them
31. Setting
on fire the victim’s beard and body parts
32. Shutting
victims up in special airless chambers until they lose consciousness
33. Making
victims run and walk barefoot and in heavy soldier’s boots for several hours until
the soles of their feet become sore all over
34. Tying
with chains and torturing in a variety of otherways.
35. Bringing
the camp guards’ children and wives to beat naked detainees;
36. Beating
a victim with metal spiked gloves
37. Punching
the victim on the head with different objects
38. Continuous
beating for several hours.
B. Mental
(or mostly mental)
1. Forcing
victims to eat the meat of a roasted newborn
2. Cursing
and calling detainees names
3. Forcing
victims (under the threat of death) to listen to the other victims of torture
screaming or to eye-witness their torture or their death
4. Making victims imitate animals (a dog, a pig)
5. Preventing
victims from falling asleep
6. Taking
victims out for false executions
7. Putting
the end of a gun in the victim’s mouth (sometimes followed by execution in the
presence of others)
8. Telling
the victim that his next of kin have been killed (raped and their throats slit)
9. Forcing
the victim to urinate and defecate in a crowded dormitory (or in a trailer with
a tarpaulin where they are kept for several days) without providing any pots
10. Forcing
the victim to curse his own faith, its patron saints or to spit at icons
11. Forcing
the victim (under the threat of death) to speak nicely about the conditions of
his captivity before representatives of international humanitarian
organizations or to sign a statement attesting to fair treatment received while
in detention/prison.
C. Combination
(of mental and corporal torture)
1. Individual
or group rape of female detainees including anal rape and fellatio.
2. Forced
placement of captured female adolescents in brothels and making them work as
prostitutes until they conceive and their "release" when they are 7
or 8 months pregnant.
3. Forcing
inmates, especially brothers or a father and his son to engage in mutual
fellatio or to have anal intercourse.
4. Putting
the victim viciously to death, following long hours of torture and intimidation
in the presence of others (by slitting his throat, firing a bullet in his
mouth, hanging, tearing off his skin, by strangulation with bare hands,
roasting the victim on a spit or by impaling him)
5. Forcing
the victim to pluck out grass or lick the blood-, faeces-
or urine-stained floor
6. Forcing
the victim to drink his own urine, swallow his cut- off hair or cigarette butts
soaked in urine and the like
7. Defecating
or urinating in the victim’s mouth
8. Forcing
inmates to dig trenches on the frontline or to sweep minefields with consequent
victimization
9. Making
the victim stand waist-deep in water and hold a dead suckling of pig in his
hands ordering him to make sure that the pig does not drown
10. Forcing
detainees to slap each other on the face,curse
each other, swear and spit
11. Taking
detainees through an urban area encouraging locals to lynch them
12. Bringing
to the camp villagers from nearby communities and letting them beat the tied-up
inmates in a variety of ways and with a large number of different objects
13. Bringing
combatants to the camp after a battle and letting them indulge in the abuse of
detainees
14. Walking
detainees on a chain around or outside the camp as if they were animals
2. M e a n s o f t o r t u r e
A. Mechanical
1. fist/knee
2. head (blow)
3. bites /biting off an ear/with one’s teeth
4. sole of foot (heavy soldier’s boot)
5. knife (bayonet)
6. butt of rifle
7. a metal bar/baseball bat
8. truncheon
9. whip (metal)
10. hammer/mallet
11. axe/hatchet
12. a variety of solid objects (stone, bench, weight on a scale
and the like)
13. rope or a wire to tie up the victim with
B. Physical-chemical
1. low-voltage
electricity
2. thermal (freezing/burns)
3. chemical preparations
4. special electric clubs
C. Firearms
D. Nutritional
1. Denying
food and/or water
2. Giving
inadequate food and/or water
E. Combined
What is of special importance is that most victims have been subjected to:
The table on page 4 offers a summary break-down of the methods of torture
into three groups: mostly corporal; mostly mental and combined forms of
torture. Specific individual cases have been dealt with under a separate
heading titled "Specific cases".
All the above-mentioned cases are also shown separately in the tables that
form an integral part of this report (see Annex). Note: the codes given to
respondents refer to the place where the examination was performed and the
number under which they were examined. (B - Brcko,
Der - Derventa, T - Trebinje, Mo - Modrica, S - Samac, Ja - Jajce,
Zv - Zvornik, Tz - Tuzla).
M E T H O D S O F T O R T U R E YES
NO
MOSTLY CORPORAL
TORTURE
beating 91
99% 1 1%
firearms 21
23% 71 77%
forcing to eat repugnant substances 22 24% 70 76%
forcing to stand for long hours in the
sun and/or in water 8 9% 84
91%
burning a part of the body 17 18% 75 82%
putting out cigarettes on the body 27 29% 65 71%
torture with the use of electricity 13 14% 79 86%
knocking out/extracting teeth 16 17% 76 83%
breaking bones 33 36% 50 64%
stereo torture 9 10% 83
90%
torture through starvation and thirst 49 52% 44 89%
cutting/pricking 36 30% 56 61%
pulling out nails 7 8% 85 92%
MOSTLY MENTAL
TORTURE
cursing, shouting, insulting in different
ways 84 91% 8 9%
false execution 40 43% 52
57%
prevention from falling asleep 10 21% 73 79%
false reports on the death of next of kin
5 5% 87
95%
witnessing torture and killing
of other detainees 20 22%
72 78%
witnessing rape of next of kin 2 2% 90 98%
making victims commit perjury 12 13% 80 87%
COMBINED
TORTURE
individual and group rapes 10 11% 82 89%
forcing detainees to perform mutual
fellatio and to have anal intercourse 10 11% 82 89%
forcing detainees to beat one another 18 20% 74 80%
defecating and urinating in detainees’
mouths 3 3%
89 97%
forcing detainees to lick the floor stained with
faeces, blood and beating
them as they do so 6 7% 86 93%
forcing to dig trenches on frontline or
sweep mine-fields 16
17% 76 83%
SPECIFIC CASES
asphyxiation in a
hermetically sealed manhole,
had to eat his plucked-out
hair twice during detention
pressing on the throat
with the hands, rape
had to run bare-foot in
heavy soldier’s boots
until the soles of his
feet got sore
chained to the old bridge
in Mostar
his testis taken out with
spiked gloves
attempted a suicide in the
camp
and then treated for
"conjunctivitis"
burnt with hot-red tongs
burnt with a hot-red wire
forced to eat meat of a roasted
newborn
chained, beaten and
starved
enucleation
of eyeballs
enucleation
of eyeballs, jumping from a-high
onto the ground "as
if into water", beaten by children
they applied salt on his
shrapnel wounds
his penis tied with a wire
and stretched
his ear bitten off
his neck broken
amputation of arms and
legs
The present civil, religious and inter-ethnic war in the space of Yugoslavia
has since its outbreak in the early 1990s, by destroying human souls and family
homes, created a terrible endemic hotbed of war-related PTSD and the afflicted
victims have been admitted to our mental wards in ever larger numbers and this
will continue long after the end of this war considering the unfavourable social and economic milieux
(Cucic, V., Bjegovic, V., Djokic, D., 1994; Popovic, M.,
1994; Zalobar, J., 1994),the chronic nature of the
disease and the possibility of long-lasting, sometimes yearlong, latency of the
forms with postponed incidence (Andreasen, N.C.,
1985; Horowitz, M.J., 1994). We can only guess the scope and implications of
this phenomenon, both in the health and the broader social context, given that
the afflicted persons also tend to report serious functioning disorders in
their family and in their broader social and professional environs. Sight should
here not be lost of the fact that, according to statistics, 15-20 % of the
adult population are prone to this disorder and up to 80 % of children exposed
to extremely strong or disastrous life stressors (Andreasen,
N.C., 1985). This disorder is, evidently, graver, lasts longer and has a higher
incidence probability when it appears as a result of man-made destruction, as,
for example, with war-related PTD cases (WHO, 1994). It could be said that
there is increasing professional experience in our miliuex
in treating this ever more frequent disorder in the wake of the ongoing war and
related social and economic turbulences (Polovina,
N., Divac, Lj., 1992); Pejovic, M., 1992; Kalicanin, P.,
Lecic- Tosevski, D., 1994).
It is, therefore, in that light that the significance of this paper should be
seen for it renders a contribution to the study of family relations as an
important factor of pathogenesis and in the treatment of PTSDs.
There is no doubt that the price of developing the technology of evil,
aggression and destruction in the on-going psychological, economic and armed
conflicts is not only being paid by the victims of primary (direct) traumatization, but also by all those (family members,
first of all) who are exposed to secondary traumatization,
i.e. the symptoms of those afflicted by the PTSD; the victims of what is known
as tertiary traumatization have of late been
increasingly in the focus of attention as the victims of secondary traumatization can exert a pathogenic influence on their
surroundings and their offspring (Davidson, S., 1980; Agger,
I., Jensen, S.B., 1994).
It is a well-known state of fact that the stressors of human design are
characterized by higher probability of causing intensive anxiety, terror and
the feeling of helplessness in the victim, and accordingly of PTSD as well, as
shown by countless studies into the state of detainees who have survived
torture in detention camps (Bailly,L., Jaffe, H., Pagella, A., 1988; Rasmussen, O.V., 1990; Lifton, R.J., 1993), but also by the research on the
torture inflicted in peace time upon sexually and physically abused children or
women and/or on the victims of violence(Coons,P.M.et
al.,1989;Pitman, R.K.,Orr.,S.P., 1993).
The availability of case history data of relevance to psychiatric heredity was
established much more often in patients with PTSD than in other respondents.
Case history data of relevance to psychiatric heredity reflected the existence
of mental patients or suicidal patterns among the respondent’s closest
(primary) relatives. These findings are in keeping with the research conducted
so far which generally indicates that the families of patients with PTSD run a
higher risk of contracting mental disorders than other families (Davidson,
J.R., Hughes, D., Blazer, D.G., George, L.K., 1991).
The feeling of those taking part in the war that their personal physical
integrity and life were at risk was an integral part of the unfortunate wartime
calamity that severed these people’s links with their peace-time reality and
played havoc with their system of values which enhanced meaningful life, love
and security.
The principal feature of all events which can be described as the cause of
depression is that they inflict damage upon the person concerned and take away
the hope that such damaged is redeemable. Today people most often speak of
three types of loss: the loss of a dear person; of one’s role; and of ideation, and our respondents have reported losses in all of
these categories.
The majority of cases did not come back to work after their return from the
frontline, they withdrew into themselves unable to bridge the gap between their
wartime and peacetime realities, thus weakening their families economically and
exposing them to a considerable degree of traumatization
as a result of their grave PTSD symptoms. The incapacitation of veterans and
refugees for work or for family-related activities in the professionally and
reproductively most active period of their lives, along with mental handicaps,
have certainly accentuated their feeling of inferiority and negative
future-related expectations. This is why our patients - war victims did not
only need psychiatric assistance in their mental rehabilitation, but also
broader psycho-social support from their families and from the relevant
professional and social networks.
According to the latest estimates made by the World Health Organization,
the number of refugees, displaced persons and those living in war-torn areas of
the former Yugoslavia totals around 4 million, of which the health of at least
800,000 (20 %) has been impaired as a result of grave war-related TS reactions
(the symptoms of a completely or partially developed PTSD). If we add around
200,000 more with peacetime TS reactions, we shall see that 10 % (or 2 million)
of the total population of the former Yugoslavia have in the past few years
experienced at least one extreme or disastrous peace-time psycho-trauma and
that at least 10 % thereof (or 200,000) are now suffering from the resulting
mental reactions. All this brings the grand total of persons in former
B e l g r a d e