Notorious camps to close down

BANJA LUKA (Reuter) - Leaders of Serb- held territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina say they are closing two notorious detention centres which provoked world outrage over detention centres in former Yugoslavia.

Omarska prison, the Bosnian Serbs' main interrogation centre, would be shut 'within a few days', said Velibor Ostojic, the Information Minister of the self-styled Serbian state. Another camp, a former ceramics factory in neighbouring Prijedor, would also close, he said. Prisoners from the camps, where several thousand people have been held, have told of beatings and starvation rations. The closures appeared part of a concerted effort by the Bosnian Serb authorities to clean up their disastrous international image.

'I do not doubt that there have been some irregularities (in the treatment of prisoners) on the Serb side,' Radovic Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs said yesterday. 'We must work to overcome the antagonisms that caused this.' Aid workers and former prisoners said the attention focused on the camps was misleading. They said most Muslims and Croats detained since the conflict erupted four months ago had been held in small makeshift jails, often beyond the control of Mr Karadzic's government. They said the treatment of inmates ranged from mild to brutal.

Freed Croatian prisoners described having been held with hundreds of others in a sports hall and a discotheque near Doboj, a town close to the border with Croatia, and in a cement factory near Zanski Most in north-west Bosnia. 'We were often beaten, especially when the Serbs had suffered casualties on the war front,' a man held near Doboj said. 'Two prisoners I was with were beaten to death. One died of a broken neck and the other because blood filled his lungs.'

Mr Ostojic insisted that worse atrocities were being committed against Serbs held on the other side of the battle lines. 'We are defending Christian Europe against Islamic fundamentalism. Why is the West attacking us for this? Why is there no criticism of camps on the Muslim side?' The Liberal Democrat Party leader, Paddy Ashdown, visited Manjaca prison camp yesterday and later said safe havens should be set up in Bosnia under international protection.