The Gabela camp or Gabela prison was a prison camp run by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia and Croatian Defence Council in Gabela. The camp was located several kilometres south of Čapljina. Its prisoners consisted of Bosniaks and Serbs.
Contents
The camp
The camp consisted of detention facilities and a munitions warehouse. "Outside observers were not allowed to visit Gabela until August 1993. At this time the ICRC registered 1,100 inmates."
The camp facilities were ammunition depots belonging to the former Yugoslav Army, consisting of four hangars marked 0, 1, 2, and 3, and three solitary confinement cells. The hangar size was 200 square metres, and up to 500 persons were held inside each. The detainees were exhausted by starvation and thirst, and were tortured. Ten litres of water were provided per 500 persons per day, so many drank urine to quench their thirst. The detainees had to perform their bodily functions in the hangars. They were forced to sing Croatian nationalist songs and to listen to lectures on how correct Croatian policies were.
Upon entering the camp, detainees were exposed to special forms of torture. They were ordered to lie on their stomachs, and they would then be brutally beaten on their backs and heads. Some had their fingers broken by clamps.
In early October, the camp warden, Boško Previšić, killed Mustafa Obradović in front of hangar No. 1, in the presence of a large number of detainees, after discovering a piece of bread concealed on him. The swedish mercenary, convicted war-criminal and later bank-robber and police-murderer Jackie Arklöv, was stationed volunteerly at the camp where he tortured prisoners.
Recent developments
After an indictment was issued against the former manager of the Gabela camp Boško Previšić he became a fugitive from justice. His deputy Nikola Andrun was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the crimes against civilians in Gabela in 1993 by the State Court in Sarajevo.