“For me, it is personal. I am still searching for the remains of my brother. I cannot move on. I cannot focus on something else and leave that behind,” said Edin Ramulic from the northwestern Bosnian town of Prijedor.
Ramulic was 22-year-old university graduate when, in April 1992, he and his male relatives, including his older brother and father, were rounded up by Bosnian Serbs, along with thousands of other non-Serb civilians from Prijedor and surrounding villages, to be deported from the area, imprisoned, tortured or killed.
More than 3,000 non-Serbs — including 102 children — were killed in Prijedor. Some were executed in their homes or in the streets, others in three prison camps where prisoners were subjected to including beatings, rape, sexual assaults and torture. Ramulic’s brother, uncle and four cousins did not survive the camps.
Much like the graphic evidence of killings and torture in Bucha, outside Kyiv, that emerged earlier this month after Russian forces withdrew from the area, the discovery by international journalists of the camps in Prijedor in August 1992 provoked global outrage and calls by world leaders for those responsible to be held to account.
A process was put in motion by the United Nations Security Council to establish a special U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. When it was set up in The Hague in 1993, it was the first international court to investigate and prosecute allegations…
