Trnopolje camp
| Trnopolje | |
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| Concentration camp | |
Detainees at the Trnopolje Camp, near Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 Location of Trnopolje within Bosnia and Herzegovina
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| Coordinates | 44°55′24″N 16°52′26″E / 44.92333°N 16.87389°ECoordinates: 44°55′24″N 16°52′26″E / 44.92333°N 16.87389°E |
| Location | Near Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Operated by | Bosnian Serb military and police authorities |
| Original use | Primary school |
| Operational | May – November 1992 |
| Inmates | Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats |
| Number of inmates | c. 30,000 |
| Killed | 90 |
The Trnopolje camp was a concentration camp established by Bosnian Serb military and police authorities in the village of Trnopolje near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the first months of the Bosnian War. Also variously termed a detainment camp, detention camp, prison, and ghetto, Trnopolje held between 4,000 and 7,000 Bosniak and Bosnian Croat inmates at any one time and served as a staging area for mass deportations, mainly of women, children, and elderly men. Between May and November 1992, an estimated 30,000 inmates passed through. Mistreatment was widespread, and there were numerous instances of torture, rape, and killing; ninety inmates died.
In August, the existence of the Prijedor camps was discovered by the Western media, leading to their closure. Trnopolje was transferred into the hands of the International Red Cross (IRC) in mid-August, and closed in November 1992. After the war, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted several Bosnian Serb officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the camp, but ruled that the abuses perpetrated in Prijedor did not constitute genocide. Crimes in Trnopolje were also listed in the ICTY's indictment of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who died mid-trial in March 2006.
The administrative district (Serbo-Croatian: opština or općina) of Prijedor is made up of 71 smaller towns and villages. According to the 1991 Yugoslav census, Prijedor had a total population of 112,470, of which 44 percent identified as Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), 42.5 percent as Serbs, 5.6 percent as Croats, 5.7 percent as Yugoslavs and 2.2 percent as "others" (Ukrainians, Russians, and Italians). Prijedor was of strategic significance to the Bosnian Serbs as it connected north-western Bosnia with the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in Croatia, a breakaway state that had been established by Croatian Serbs in 1991. It was also in 1991 that the Serbs of Prijedor organized and enforced a Serb-only administration in the town and placed it under the control of the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka. Milomir Stakić, a physician who had been the deputy to the elected Bosniak mayor Muhamed Čehajić, was declared the Serb mayor of Prijedor.
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