Citing the agreement on cooperation in prosecuting perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, which Croatia and Serbia signed on October 13, 2006, the association demanded an investigation into the responsibility of not just camp guards and commanders but also of Serbian institutions that had organised the camps.
Former prisoners of war also asked Chief Public Prosecutor Mladen Bajic to publish the contents of the agreement on the Internet site of his office.
After the capture of eastern Slavonia and Baranja in 1991 and an ethnic cleansing campaign, and particularly after the fall of Vukovar, Serb-led Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) forces took Croatian military and civilian POWs to camps in Nis, Sremska Mitrovica, Begejci, Staicevo and elsewhere in Serbia, the head of the association, Zoran Sangut, said at a press conference in Zagreb on Sunday.
About 10,000 people were taken to detention camps, about 300 of whom were killed there, while about 495 are still unaccounted-for. Those who survived were most brutally tortured, he added.
Sangut said that the JNA leadership and Serbian state authorities, primarily the ministries of the interior and defence, must have been directly involved in organising the camps for prisoners from Croatia.