ZENICA (Bosnia): Daniel Marinic, a convicted murderer, is a victim of Bosnia’s ethnic rivalries: he must remain in a prison unit for convicts with psychiatric disorders even though his imprisonment is against the law.

Convicted in 1999 of killing his parents, the prisoner in his 30s is one of two dozen patients still in Zenica jail’s psychiatric unit in contravention of a new criminal code that requires him to be treated in a specialised medical institution.

They spend time crammed in dark, damp rooms on the second floor of a 19th-century building, cut off from the world by thick iron bars. In two rooms, 10 plain iron beds on bare concrete floors are covered with blankets reminiscent of the kind Bosnia received as humanitarian aid during the 1992-95 war.

“It’s better now,” said Marinic, standing in a tiny corridor crammed with prisoners excited by the arrival of visitors. “It was really bad when there were 30 of us in the room.” Until a few years ago, there were 70 patients in the unit.

Marinic seems calm enough, but doctors have advised against his release, saying he could be dangerous for other patients if put in a civilian hospital.

“They should not be in the prison but in a hospital, but we have no other place for them,” said Zenica prison warden Nihad Spahic. “We aim to get rid of such patients eventually.”

The reason the prisoners are stuck here is that Bosnia’s two post-war autonomous regions – the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic – have for two years failed to agree on building an institution for them.

Both are coping with a lack of facilities – a consequence of the disintegration of Bosnia’s once-unified prison system.

The 122-year-old prison complex in the central town of Zenica is the largest in Bosnia and the sole high-security facility in the Muslim-Croat federation.

Bosnia was ordered in 2006 by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights to build a state medical facility to accommodate convicts with psychiatric disorders.

The central cabinet had agreed with the Swiss government to use a 2.8 million Swiss franc ($2.42 million) donation to build an extra wing on a psychiatric hospital in eastern Bosnia.

But bickering between the regions over its ownership and use has delayed the process. The central government has a 2008 budget of $887 million, and each region has its own budget.

“Unless there is an agreement between the regions, it’s difficult to move things out of the dead end,” said Justice Ministry spokeswoman Marina Bakic.

Compensation

Half of the 70 patients originally kept in Zenica have been released, because they are not deemed dangerous and their families have vouched for them and their care. But Marinic has been in prison illegally since the new criminal code came into effect in 2003. The European Court of Human Rights ordered Bosnia in October to compensate him and he will receive 25,000 euros, but must stay put until a new facility is built.

Three other convicts who also brought suits against the state were released, because they were not considered to be dangerous.

“I want to go to a civilian hospital with better conditions,” said Marinic, wearing a woollen cap like most other patients in the unit. Everyone in Zenica, from the prison warden to guards to convicts, agrees the ruined mental health department is inadequate for prisoners with psychiatric problems.

“Tell me if this is a madhouse or a prison!” yelled Himzo Memic, sentenced to indefinite medical treatment for attempting to stab his girlfriend. “What are they going to do about this?” he asked, surrounded by a crowd of inmates.

Memic’s group shares two rooms, prisoners’ clothes hanging all around the iron beds. It is cold and dark and looks like an improvised military camp.

In the mental unit, one psychiatrist treats the patients and therapists spend all day with them, administering sedatives and drugs. For recreation they can use a segregated garden.

The rest of Zenica’s 830 or so inmates sat on benches in prison parks on a sunny autumn day, some playing table-tennis or football, others working in an iron foundry or a joiner’s workshop producing decorative wooden boxes for sale. Niset Ramic is one of them. An ethnic Muslim jailed for 30 years for war crimes against Serbs, he said he feels almost at home in Zenica, where he has spent the past 16 years.

“I came here in 1992, when the guards still wore five-pointed red stars on their caps,” he said, referring to a symbol of former socialist Yugoslavia.

Even if ethnic tensions persist in denying Marinic and his fellows proper treatment, Ramic said there were no clashes between the 16 regular prisoners convicted of war crimes: Muslims, Serbs and Croats coexist in calm.

“The brotherhood and unity still works here,” he said.—Reuters