Camp Dretelj

The dretelj camp was one of the Croatian war party in the Bosnian war -operated prison camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina where Serbs and Bosniaks detained, tortured and murdered were. It was located on the territory of the municipality of Čapljina in the internationally unrecognized Republic of Herceg-Bosna and had been in operation since 1993.

history

Until the fall of Yugoslavia, there were barracks of the Yugoslav federal army on the site . Since 1993, when Croatian warlords decided the so-called ethnic cleansing of the lower Neretva valley from Bosniaks and Serbs, the camp was initially operated by the Croatian Defense Forces in Herzegovina and later by the Croatian Defense Council .

The death toll is still unclear. Detainees were subjected to sexual abuse and rape .

In September 1993 the International Committee of the Red Cross registered 1,200 Bosniak prisoners in the camp, where, according to Helsinki Watch , 1,500 Serbs are also said to have been detained.

Legal processing

On November 23, 1994, Refik Šarić , a Bosniak collaborator with the camp team who had fled to Denmark , was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in Copenhagen for participating in 14 tortures, two of which resulted in death.

In March 2010, the Oslo Court of Appeal found warden Mirsad Repak guilty of war crimes against prisoners in the Dretelj camp on 13 of 14 counts ; Repak announced revision . In December 2010 Norway's Supreme Court overturned the war crimes conviction, which had only been criminalized in Norway in 2005; proceedings for deprivation of liberty continued.

On April 8, 2011, Ahmet Makitan , a member of the guards at the Dretelj camp, was sentenced to a total of five years in Stockholm for war crimes and kidnapping .

Jadranko Prlić , Bruno Stojić , Slobodan Praljak , Milivoj Petković , Valentin Ćorić and Berislav Pušić were tried in connection with the Dretelj camp, among others, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague . In May 2013 the defendants were sentenced to between 10 and 25 years in prison. On November 29, 2017, all judgments were upheld in the appellate court , and Praljak committed suicide in the courtroom immediately after the verdict was pronounced .