Commemoration of the Day of Detainees and Crimes against Detainees of the 'Betonirka' Camp

(Patria) - Members of the Alliance of Detainees in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Municipal Association of Detainees of Sanski Most, and SUL USK "dr. Irfan Ljubijankić" will today mark the "Day of Detainees of the Municipality of Sanski Most" and the crimes against detainees of the "Betonirka" camp near the memorial monument at the site of the mass grave, at the confluence of the Dabar River into the Sana River.

After the commemoration at the confluence, the organizers plan to visit the detainee monument at the location of the former "Betonirka" camp, from which, on this day, a group of Bosniak and Croat detainees was sent to the "Manjača" camp near Banja Luka, 19 of whom never reached their destination.

On that day in 1992, a group of about 60 detainees from the "Betonirka" camp, after severe torture in the "Betonirka" camp, was sent on a hot July day to the "Manjača" camp near Banja Luka in a military truck with the tarpaulin lowered and closed.

Due to the overcrowding of the truck, excessive heat, and lack of air under the hot tarpaulin of the truck, 19 detainees paid for this "ride" with their lives.

They were later buried at the confluence of the Dabar River into the Sana River.

- It is impossible not to notice the similarities of such a crime with the fascist "gas" trucks from World War II in Poland, where detainees were "transported" in a similar way, while exhaust gases were returned to the closed truck trailers. Similar methods, the same policy and consequences, only about 50 years later in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina have only confirmed the fascist policy, methodology, and actions that were clearly only defeated in World War II, but not definitively, it was stated in the statement of the Alliance of Detainees in Bosnia and Herzegovina.