Prijedor

The Trnopolje camp was established by the civil authorities of the Municipality of Prijedor and guarded by Bosnian Serb soldiers from Prijedor. Slobodan Kuruzovic headed the camp. Trnopolje was essentially a transit camp whose main purpose was the forced relocation of the Bosnian Muslim population, especially women, children and the elderly. Due to its transitional character, the number of detainees fluctuated greatly. Between May and October 1992, numerous rapes occurred here. Not all perpetrators were camp workers.

Some were allowed to visit the camp from the outside. Soldiers took girls aged sixteen and seventeen from the camp and raped them on a truck on the way to Kozarac. In one case, a thirteen-year-old Bosnian Muslim girl was raped. A rape victim was told by a member of the camp staff that it was war and nothing could be done about these things. In August 1992, Slobodan Kuruzovic not only allowed women to be taken out of the camp to be raped, but he himself arranged for the detention of a Bosnian Muslim woman in the house where he had his office. The first night he entered her room with a gun and a knife. He undressed and told the woman he wanted to see ‘how Muslim women fuck.’ She replied, ‘You better kill me.’

When the woman started screaming, Kuruzovic said, ‘You scream in vain. There is no one here who can help you.’ He started to rape her and when she kept screaming he warned her: ‘You had better keep quiet. Did you see all those soldiers standing outside? They will all take turns with you.’ He left saying ‘See you tomorrow.’ The woman was bleeding, spent the whole night crying and wanted to kill herself. Kuruzovic raped this woman almost every night for about a month. He stabbed her shoulder and leg twice with his knife because she was resisting the rape.