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Location: Vitez, Kruščica

The Black House is a is a facility located in the village of Kruščica, Vitez Municipality, which during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina served as a detention centre where prisoners of war and civilians of Croat ethnicity were imprisoned and tortured in 1993. The Black House housed the headquarters of the Military Police of the First Battalion of the 325th Mountain Brigade.

In the Black House, detainees were subjected to inhuman treatment, physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence, and were forced to beat each other with batons. On several occasions, detainees were taken to dig trenches and brought to the front lines, where they were exposed to crossfire, while some detainees had explosives attached to their bodies.

Nenad Križanović testified that during his detention in the Black House, he and other detainees were frequently taken to dig trenches along the confrontation lines between the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). The witness also stated that detainee Goran Strukar and Witness “A” were tied with explosives and taken into minefields.

For the crimes committed in the Black House, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Minet Akeljić, Šaban Haskić, Senad Bilal, and Hazim Patković guilty in 2019 of the criminal offence of war crimes against civilians under Article 142(1) of the Criminal Code of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY CC), sentencing them to a total of 27 years’ imprisonment.

It is important to note that five decades earlier, during the Second World War, the Black House was the first concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina in which approximately 1,500 detainees from Sarajevo, Zenica, Foča, Višegrad, Travnik, and other towns were imprisoned during September 1941.

The Black House Memorial Complex was declared a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2014 in honour of the victims of fascist terror. In addition to the main building, the complex includes a memorial plaque engraved with verses from the poem The Pit by Ivan Goran Kovačić, as well as a bronze sculpture depicting three figures as a symbol of suffering and victory. On the other hand, there is no memorial whatsoever dedicated to the victims of the war of the 1990s. In addition, the complex has fallen into disrepair, and the house is at risk of collapse.

Photos: Radio Slobodna Evropa