FBU-2007-01-04

Born and lived in Prijedor with his family, which included wife, son and daughter; made a living as a truck driver transporting meat products for the company IMPRO PRIJEDOR; drove locally in the city and from the city to Banja Luka and back; remembers Yugoslavia before the war as a place where you could provide a decent life for your family; had friends that were all nationalities and religions in these days; during census, there was no group listed as Bosnian or Muslim and was forced to identity as Yugoslavian; remembers seeing changes in Bosnia around 5 or 6 months after the war in Croatia had started; groups that had been multiethnic at work and in his private life began to separate; friends such as one of his good friends who was a Bosnian Serb began to act differently towards him, including yelling and cursing at him; large scale propaganda seen on TV showcasing the Serbian people as victims in every sense; on his last day as an employed person he was told he could no longer work at his company by a Serbian guard who was his best friend; given a paper showing that he was banned from the grounds due to his Muslim identity; later received papers from MUP or the military police in Banja Luka confirming everything the guard at the gate had told him; never returned to work after that; family began to use savings for food and other things; life for his family and himself become hard; they would not go outside to buy food but had to contract others to get it for them; during the evening hours would hide with family in home due to the killing, rape and theft that were now occurring in the city; after a short time he was rounded up by the police and his house was set on fire; family that included his wife and kids were stayed with friends while he along with neighbors and other extended family members were taken away; taken to the Keraterm camp around May 13th, 1992; guards spent the first two days there getting and accurate number of prisoners and a general roll call; after this initial stage, the beating of prisoners began; every day at the start of each new shift, the guards would circle around the whole building and choose prisoners to torture and beat; they would also be taken out for questioning and accused of false charges; if they denied the charges they would be beaten more; they were allowed to eat around noon but had to run the whole time to get around four or five spoonfuls of soup and warm water; prisoners were often beaten or killed during; the camp included everyone from Prijedor that was not Serbian, including Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and Roma people; when Keraterm was closed, all the prisoners were put on buses and moved to Omarska, his group consisted of 24 people who after arrival were separated; 12 of them who were seen as more radical Muslims and potential threats (sometimes due just to their names) were sent to the White House for questioning; at the White House, they were questioned and beaten more and every night new prisoners would arrive; every night some of the prisoners would be killed; stayed at the White House for 17 days until MUP from Banja Luka arrived and they were told they would be transferred to a military prison in Gradiska; only 4 of the 12 prisoners were taken first to Banja Luka and then transferred to the military prison in Gradiska; Gradiska was operated by people that were not from the Prijedor region and they had a way of questioning and torturing at the same time; they tied him up to a chair, shined a bright light in his eyes and hooked up a battery to his toes and fingers; he was then accused of things such as killing Serbian children; when he denied the charges they would beat him and if he passed out they would pour water on him; after about 5 days, a Bosnian Serb officer came in and told them to either kill him or let him go back to his cell; was taken back to cell and held there for two days; periodically the guards threatened execution by firing squad; he was taken out and put against a wall and then waited hours to be shot, after which the guards bring him back to his cell; after some time, he and around 5 buses of prisoners were taken to the Croatian border and exchanged for Bosnian Serb officers; he was one of the first to cross during the exchange, after which the exchange was called off; arrived in Croatia and held in a military camp for victims of concentration camps; there he had very little freedom and suffered from health problems and had lost close to 120 pounds; applied for papers to go to the United States; after approval taken via truck to the Zagreb airport and then to the United States; arrived in Idaho where he did not know the language; had no funds and his family was not with him; has not returned to Bosnia and has fears and stress from the war; afraid to travel to Bosnia and Prijedor; suffers from headaches, anxiety, and stress along with memory loss