It took years for Zehra Murguz to be able to testify about what happened to her and other Muslim women in the "rape camps" run by Serb forces during the war in Bosnia.

One of the awful memories that drove her to give evidence was of seeing a girl of 12 "with a doll in her arms" dragged into one of them.

Murguz felt she was also speaking "in the name of all the others, of that girl of 12 who will never talk... who was never found".

The horror began for her in the summer of 1992 when Serb forces took the mountain town of Foca and Murguz was taken to the Partizan gym, one of several notorious rape camps the Serbs ran.

For months dozens of Muslim women and girls were gang raped and forced into sexual slavery there. Others were sold or killed.

At least 20,000 people suffered sexual violence across Bosnia as Yugoslavia collapsed into the worst war Europe had then seen since 1945.

Most victims were Bosnian Muslims, but Serbs and Croat women also suffered.

In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the first court in Europe to recognise rape as a crime against humanity in an historic verdict against three Bosnian Serb army officers from Foca.

While a handful of survivors driven by a thirst for justice continue to collect thousands of testimonies, many remain locked in silence........

© International Business Times