For the first time after 29 years, former inmates visited the former "Gabela" prison camp, which was run by wartime Bosnian Croat forces and laid wreaths at the site where many of them were tortured and many other inmates lost their lives.

One of the former inmates is Amer Djulic, who was a prisoner in several camps run by the forces of the former self-declared statelet of Herzeg-Bosnia in the country. He was first taken away by Bosnian Croat forces at the age of 17 and would spend a total of 233 days in prison camps.

He explained that the Gabela camp operated from June 30, 1993, until 22.12.1993 and that more than 2,000 prisoners were kept there in total.

He said this is the first time the former inmates have had the opportunity to visit the site after nearly 30 years.

“After the formation of the new Association of Prisoners of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, we started to work on these things because we only want the truth and to visit the killing sites of Bosniaks in 1992 and 1993. We sent a request to the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces, who granted us entry into the administrative part of the military location in order to lay candles and remember the 11 victims of the Gabela camp,” Djulic said.

Kemal Balavac, who spent a total of 11 and a half months in Gabela and Ljubuski, recalled the difficult days in camp.

“Every day we had to pluck weeds, blackberries, grass and everything else and at the end of the day we would be beaten,” he said.