Backup material on Serbian concentration camps in
Bosnia
Rough footage filmed by ITN teams and
available on YouTube:
The Serbian camera
team's footage
The film produced by RTS
(Serbian Television) and Jared Israel's Serb-apologist
emperors-clothes.com:
"Judgment! The Bosnian 'Death Camp' Accusation: An Expose"
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Dr. Idriz Merdzanic's four
interviews
A comparison of Dr. Merdzanic's four different interviews offers a
useful insight into the truthfulness with which conditions at the camp
were reported by Serb and British media.
The first two interviews are given on the same day, 5 August 1992, to
the two teams filming at Trnopolje, the British team and the RTS crew
that was "by chance" filming at Omarska and Trnopolje at the same time.
There is another interview with Penny Marshall during her return visit
to Trnopolje a week later, and an interview with a Channel 4 Dispatches
team in 1993, at an anonymous but apparently unthreatening location.
Merdzanic's interview to the RTS crew is featured in the film
"Judgment," jointly produced by RTS and emperors-clothes.com. The
relevant section is at 2:25 minutes into
Part 2.
The commentary
describes how "The refugee centre at Trnopolje included a medical
facility. The RTS and ITN crews interviewed a Dr. [garbled version of
Merdzanic's name], a Muslim doctor there." The Serb interviewer asks
[English subtitles] "Did anyone die here?" An anxious-appearing
Merdzanic answers "Yes, just as we came, an old man, he was old and
sick." The reporter asks, "Not because there was no medicine." and
Merdzanic answers "No, but all hospitals in the area lack antibiotics
and medicine. It's a problem in the entire area not just here". The
emperors-clothes.com voiceover then advises the viewer "While you're
watching this film bear in mind that these pictures - the interviews
with refugees, the Muslim doctor, and so on would suggest a humane
refugee centre functioning under difficult conditions - were never shown
by the ITN news station in Britain and keep in mind that this refugee
centre is the place that ITN portrayed as a death camp."
(This is the film referred to by Herman and Peterson in which the RTS
crew and the joint producers ignore the emaciated individuals visible
with Alic in the prisoners' enclosure at Trnopolje as they film the ITN
crew filming; it's the film that edits out the gaunt, haunted inmates
seen in the ITN film from its footage in the canteen at Omarska and
makes no reference to the fact that the film crews were refused access
to other parts of the camp.)
Interviewed the same day by Penny Marshall in front of the TV crew's
"Serb hosts," Merdzanic appears nervous and unable to speak
openly. Off camera he gives her the roll of secretly-taken photographs
to smuggle out of the camp. At 5:20 minutes into
Srpski logor smrti - Prijedor 4.
In his second interview with Marshall, when she visits a week later,
after conditions have markedly improved following the international
furor, Marshall shows Merdzanic UK press coverage and in particular she
points out a photograph on the inside page of one of the newspapers she
has brought from the smuggled film. The difference in Dr. Merdzanic's
demeanor is noticeable. At 2:30 minutes into
Srpski logori smrti - Prijedor 6.
In the final interview, given to Ed Harriman's 1993 Channel 4 Dispatches
film "A Town called Kozarac" (end of part 3,
and beginning of part 4), Merdzanic says "I took the photos so I could prove the truth about the
camp if ever I got the chance to." The subject of one of the
photographs, which looks like the picture pointed to by Marshall, is
also interviewed. He is identified as Nedzad Jakupovic, a survivor and
witness of atrocities at Omarska, who confirms that he was beaten at
Trnopolje and says that he probably owes his life to Dr. Merdzanic.
More of Dr. Merdzanic's evidence is available in a transcript of the
evidence he gave to the trial of Milomir Stakic, mayor of Prijedor, at
the ICTY.
Sept 10 and
Sept 11, 2002 (pages 7715-774). (Word documents)