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Location: Vlasenica

The Sušica camp in the territory of Vlasenica municipality was established at the end of May and was in operation until the end of September 1992, managed by the military and the local police in Sušica. From the creation of the camp until October of that year, 8,000 Bosniak and other non-Serb civilians were imprisoned in the hangar of the camp, with an average of 200 to 500 detainees placed in this small space.

According to the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (hereinafter: ICTY), the following persons were convicted: Dragan Nikolić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, Mićo Stanišić and Stojan Župljanin. The accused Slobodan Milošević died before the judgment was pronounced. The war crimes for which they were convicted are genocide, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, sexual violence, torture and other war crimes. They were sentenced to a total of 127 years in prison for the crimes committed, including one life sentence.

Women, children and men were detained in the camp. After some time, the women were forcibly moved to nearby “Muslim areas.” Unlike them, the men were detained until the camp was closed, when they were transferred to the larger Batković detention camp near the city of Bijeljina.

Detainees of the Sušica camp, among whom were girls and elderly women, were sexually abused and raped on numerous occasions by camp guards, special forces, local soldiers and other men who were allowed access to the camp. During the night, the women were taken out of the hangar to the guard house, facilities around the camp, Panorama Hotel, the military headquarters and places where they performed forced labour. Protected witnesses ST 153 and ST 082 in the ICTY case Stanišić & Župljanin (IT-08-91) testified that Dragan Nikolić took women from the camp in the evening hours, who would later return crying, with torn clothes and tangled hair. 

Today, this place is one of the many unmarked places of suffering. The initiative to buy it and turn it into a memorial room for the victims of the camp did not come to fruition. It is visited during the Peace March from Turalić to the Sušica camp, the only form of memorialisation commemorating the suffering and agony of thousands of people of all ages.