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The Trnopolje camp was an internment camp established by Republika Srpska military and police authorities in the village of Trnopolje near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the first months of the Bosnian War. Also variously termed a concentration camp, detainment camp, detention camp, prison, and ghetto, Trnopolje held between 4,000 and 7,000 Bosniak and Bosnian Croat inmates at any one time and served as a staging area for mass deportations, mainly of women, children, and elderly men. Between May and November 1992, an estimated 30,000 inmates passed through. Mistreatment was widespread and there were numerous instances of torture, rape, and killing; ninety inmates died.
In August 1992, the existence of the Prijedor camps was discovered by the Western media, leading to their closure. Trnopolje was transferred into the hands of the International Red Cross (IRC) in mid-August, and closed in November 1992. After the war, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted several Bosnian Serb officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the camp, but ruled that the abuses perpetrated in Prijedor did not constitute genocide. Crimes in Trnopolje were also listed in the ICTY's indictment of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who died mid-trial in March 2006.
On 30 April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces seized control of Prijedor. Four-hundred Bosnian Serb police participated in the takeover, whose objective was to usurp the functions of the municipality's president and vice-president, the director of the post office, and the chief of police. Serb employees of the public security station and reserve police gathered in the suburb of Čirkin Polje, where they were broadly divided into five groups of about 20 members each, and ordered to gain control of five buildings, one assigned to each group: the assembly building, police headquarters, courts, bank, and post office. Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) politicians prepared a declaration of the takeover, which was broadcast repeatedly on Radio Prijedor the following day. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) would conclude that the takeover was an illegal coup d'état, planned and coordinated long in advance with the aim of creating an ethnically pure municipality. The conspirators made no secret of the takeover plan, and it was implemented by the coordinated actions of Serb politicians, police, and army. Milomir Stakić, a leading figure in the coup, was to play a dominant role in the political life of the municipality during the war.
Following the seizure of power, Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats were removed from positions of responsibility. On 30 May 1992, Prijedor police chief Simo Drljača officially opened four camps (Trnopolje, Omarska camp, Keraterm camp and Manjača) where non-Serbs who failed to leave Prijedor were then confined. To avert resistance, Bosnian Serb forces interrogated all non-Serbs that were deemed a threat and arrested every Bosniak and Croat who had authority or power. Non-Serb men of fighting age were particularly targeted for interrogation and separated from women, children and the elderly.
Trnopolje was described variously as a ghetto, a prison and a detention camp. A United Nations (UN) report from 1994 reported that Trnopolje was a concentration camp which functioned as a staging area for mass deportations mainly of women, children, and elderly men. The reported found that:
Refugees reported that Trnopolje was a "decent" camp in comparison to Omarska and Keraterm as there were no systematic killings, only arbitrary ones. Indeed, many non-Serbs entered the camp voluntarily, "simply to avoid the rampaging militias plundering their streets and villages". This phenomenon led British journalist Ed Vulliamy to describe Trnopolje as "a perverse haven" for the Bosniaks and Croats of Prijedor. Author Hariz Halilovich writes: Many inmates were starved and physically or verbally abused during their imprisonment. By August 1992, Trnopolje held about 3,500 people. On 7 August 1992, reporters from ITN (ITN), a British television station, took footage of the prisoners at Omarska and Trnopolje, and recorded their living conditions. The images were shown around the world and caused public outrage. This prompted the Bosnian Serb authorities to allow journalists and the International Red Cross (IRC) access to some of the Prijedor camps, but not before the most emaciated of the prisoners were killed or shipped off to camps far from the public eye. Some 200 former male inmates were separated and killed in the Korićani Cliffs massacre on 21 August 1992. The publicity generated by the discovery of the Prijedor camps led to their closure by the end of August. In mid-August, Trnopolje was placed into the hands of the IRC. The camp was officially shut down that November.
"Prijedor 92", an association representing the survivors of Prijedor area camps, estimates that 90 inmates perished in the camp during its operation. During Milomir Stakić's trial, ICTY prosecutors claimed that several hundred non-Serbs were killed at Trnopolje between May and November 1992. The ICTY puts the number of inmates killed in all Bosnian Serb-run camps in Prijedor at 1,500. The number of women raped in Trnopolje remains unknown.
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