Dretelj camp

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Dretelj was a concentration camp run by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War.

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[edit] The Camp

The camp was located near Čapljina and Medjugorje in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Originally a Yugoslav National Army barracks, the camp was primarily concrete with six warehouses, along with two concrete tunnels that were dug into the hillsides. Each warehouse was roughly 200 square meters, of which the Croats fit anywhere between 400 to 700 prisoners. Those housed in these warehouses were forced to sleep on the concrete floors. In regard of the tunnels, those kept inside were left in complete darkness until the captors opened the sliding metal doors. The original maximum capacity for these tunnels was 170 people, in which case the Croats held 600 prisoners instead.

The prisoners themselves were mainly Bosniaks and Serbs from Stolac, Prozor, Rama, Jablanica and Čapljina. Of these prisoners, 1,500 were of Serb ethnicity. Reportedly, soldiers of the Bosnian Army were placed in the tunnels. The ages of such prisoners ranged from thirteen-year-old children to seventy year old men. Several women were also housed in the prison cells.

The wardens, at first, were members of the HOS. In the time that they ran the camp, they reportedly wore black uniforms of the Ustashe and carried Ustashe flags, machine guns, and daggers. In September 1993, the HOS reportedly handed over control of the camp to the HVO.

[edit] Treatment of the Prisoners

On arrival to the camp, most prisoners were robbed of their money and experienced beatings from the Croat captors. Afterward, they were placed in one of the many hangers of the camp. From then on, the prisoners themselves experienced severe abuse from their Croat captors, ranging from starvation to torture. This evidently led to the deaths of an unknown number of prisoners.

At night, the Croats would remove prisoners for interrogations. Methods of torture against the prisoners ranged from impaling their tongues on knives to biological experiments. Sometimes, the Croat guards would make the prisoners engage in fistfights. If their fights didn’t amuse the captors, they themselves would interfere and inflict more severe forms of beatings.

Sometimes the captors would spray the prisoners with fire hoses in the warehouses and make them sing nationalist songs of the Ustashe. It got to a point eventually where the prisoners became nearly indifferent to the torture sessions, in which case an investigating officer suspended torture sessions for ten days. On one night in July of 1993, some intoxicated Croat guards fired automatic weapons into one of the tunnels, killing ten to twelve men instantly.

Food and water rations were rare, in which case many of the inmates suffered from malnutrition. There are conflicting reports as to whether the prisoners were fed once or twice a day. When served food (typically one loaf of bread and a few spoonfuls of soup per eighteen men), they would have ten to twenty seconds to eat. If they did not finish in time, they would be beaten. Between July 13th and 15th, the Croats refused the prisoners their rations as punishment for HVO losses in Dubrave.

Desperate measures were taken by individual prisoners to survive. During the summers, temperatures would rise above 50 C, undoubtedly resulting in the deaths due to heat exhaustion. In turn, some of these prisoners drank their own urine to avoid dehydration. Some prisoners were given the status of ‘higher prisoners,’ in which they would do kitchen work or even help the Croat wardens torture prisoners. The end result put such Bosniaks on war crimes lists.

[edit] The Last Days

On September 6th, 1993, the International Committee of the Red Cross was granted access to the camp. Before their arrival, prisoners were cleaned, latrines were installed, and ventilation was restored. Child prisoners were loaded onto trucks and transferred to a nearby camp in Čapljina. The Croat captors further threatened to kill any prisoner who did not confess to being a combatant.

From August to October 1993, a large number of prisoners were transferred to other prisons elsewhere in the region. On October 3, 1993, the camp was reportedly partially closed after the release of a number of prisoners.

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