Azem KurticSarajevoBIRNMarch 22, 202316:05Part of the former Heliodrom detention camp in the city of Mostar will be turned into a military museum with 270,000 euros of financial support from the Bosnian Defence Ministry, despite opposition from former prisoners.
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Flowers laid at the entry door to the Heliodrom camp on the 29th anniversary of dissolution of the camp. Photo: Bljesak.info
The Bosnian Defence Ministry told BIRN that it is planning to invest 540,000 Bosnian marks, some 270,000 euros, over the next three years on rebuilding part of the former Heliodrom detention camp in Mostar as the Military Museum of the 1st Infantry Regiment of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Regarding the construction of the facility for the needs of the 1st Infantry (Guards) Regiment of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that is, for the preparation of the building for a museum, the financial resources are mostly secured through donations from the Association of HVO [Croatian Defence Council] War Medal Holders,” the Defence Ministry said.
But former prisoners who were detained at the camp by Croatian Defence Council, HVO forces are opposed to the project.
Suljo Kmetas from Mostar was detained in 1993 by the HVO and held in a detention camp with other Bosniaks from the area, first a former police station premises for six months, and then for three-and-a-half additional months at the Heliodrom detention camp, which was located in the Stanislav Baja Kraljevic military base in Mostar.
“I don’t have the words to describe the fact that someone would finance that museum, especially with the public money,” Kmetas, who is now president of the Union of Camp Inmates of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, told BIRN.
The Helidrom was run by the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna, an unrecognised Croat-led statelet during wartime. According to indictments at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, the HVO started detaining Bosniak men in the Heliodrom camp and others from 1993.
“More than 20,000 people passed through these camps,” Kmetas said.
The idea to create the museum came from the Association of HVO War Medal Holders, which was not available for comment.
Responding to the former prisoners’ complaints about establishing the museum in the premises of the former camp, the Defence Ministry said that “it is not planned to be in the hangars, that is, at the place where the inmates were kept”.
But Kmetas rejected this argument.
“The whole complex was a concentration camp, including the barracks, and the area of the military base. Every building had metal bars on the windows and doors,” he said.
“Just the thought that some museum will be created in the camp, it’s really offensive for me,” he added.
In 2017, the ICTY sentenced Bosnian Croat wartime military and political leaders Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoje Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic to 111 years in prison for taking part in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly removing Bosniaks from territories under Bosnian Croat control during wartime in an attempt to create a ‘Greater Croatia’.
Detentions and abuses of prisoners at the Heliodrom camp, which was officially closed on April 19, 1994, formed part of their indictment.
The museum is one of three that the Defence Ministry decided to establish in 2019. The second one is dedicated to the Second Infantry Regiment and will be located at the Rajlovac Barracks in the capital Sarajevo, and the third is dedicated to the Third Infantry Regiment and will be located at the Kozara Barracks in Banja Luka.
All three regiments were established in 2005, when Bosnia and Herzegovina formed a unique army by uniting the HVO, the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Army of Republika Srpska.
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