Zoran Žigić

Zoran Žigić (born 20 September 1958), sometimes known by the nickname Žiga, is a former reserve policeman who was found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of persecutions, torture and cruel treatment – constituting crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war – committed at the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje concentration camps in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War.

Žigić was born, raised and worked as a taxi driver in and around the town of Prijedor until late May 1992, and was known to the police in the village of Omarska near Prijedor as a petty criminal. In late May 1992 he was mobilised as a reserve police officer. In this role he regularly entered the Omarska and Keraterm camps which held almost exclusively non-Serb detainees from the surrounding districts who had been rounded up during the ethnic cleansing of central Bosanska Krajina. He also entered the Trnopolje camp. When he entered the camps he abused detainees, eagerly participating in crimes of serious physical and mental violence against non-Serbs detained at the camps. His crimes included the murder of one detainee at the Omarska camp and three detainees at the Keraterm camp. The Omarska camp was closed in late August following international outcry in the wake of a visit and reporting by British journalist Ed Vulliamy. In 1994 Žigić was convicted on unrelated murder charges by a Bosnian Serb court and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in the prison in Banja Luka.

He was indicted by the ICTY in 1995, surrendered to ICTY investigators in April 1998 at Banja Luka prison, and was transferred to the ICTY. He entered pleas of not guilty to all eight counts under the indictment, and along with his co-accused Miroslav Kvočka, Milojica Kos, Mlađo Radić and Dragoljub Prcać was tried by the ICTY between 28 February 2000 and 2 November 2001. Žigić was sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment, the longest term out of the five co-accused. His conviction was upheld on appeal in February 2005, and his sentence was affirmed. A motion for reconsideration was denied, and in June 2006 he was transferred to an Austrian jail to serve the rest of his sentence. He was granted early release effective 16 December 2014, and his request to avoid extradition back to Bosnia and Herzegovina to complete his sentence for murder was denied. As of 2023 his whereabouts were unknown.