Hunting Lodge in Begejci, Torak, Republic of Serbia

Location: Begejci (today Torak) near Zrenjanin

Importance of the locality:

The Hunting Lodge in Begejci (today’s Torak) was used from 1 October 1991 as a detention site for Croats and Serbs from Osijek, Vukovar, Vinkovci and the surrounding area. Most were detained at the Begejci Hunting Lodge after the fall of Vukovar in November 1991. Until its closure in December 1991, members of the Croatian armed forces, as well as a smaller number of JNA reservists from Serbia who refused to participate in the war, were held at the Begejci Hunting Lodge. Apart from them, there were also civilians, women and children. It is estimated that around 750 people had been held at these detention facilities, and that there were 37 women among them. The prisoners slept on concrete floors and had an improvised toilet. There was little food and there was just one slop bucket and one mug to be shared by all the prisoners. During the night, guards would wake the prisoners and force them to sing Chetnik songs. At the trial of Goran Hadžić before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), doctor Mladen Lončar, a Croat from Ilok who had been one of the prisoners, testified about the beatings and rapes that were committed at the detention facility.

Entity: Republic of Serbia

Ethnic group: Croats, Serbs

Area that victims came from: Osijek, Vukovar, Vinkovci (CRO); Vojvodina (SRB)

Responsibility: JNA, JNA Security Service

Court trials:

In 2006, the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) in Belgrade, in cooperation with the State Attorney’s Office of Croatia, initiated an investigation of detention facilities in Serbia, including the Begejci Hunting Lodge. Marko Crevar, a guard who had previously been a member of the Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) Territorial Defence and Police, was accused of violence against the prisoners. In 2015, Crevar was convicted by the War Crimes Chamber at the Higher Court in Belgrade and sentenced to one year and six months in prison.
In 2008, the Vukovar 1991 Prison Camp Survivors Association, in cooperation with the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), filed charges with the OWCP in Serbia against unknown persons from several detention facilities in Serbia for war crimes against prisoners of war. The preliminary criminal proceedings are under way.
In 2018, the County Court in Osijek started a trial in absentia of general Aleksandar Vasiljveić, Head of Security at the Yugoslav National Army (UB JNA) Federal Secretariat for National Defence (SSNO) for crimes committed against Croats in detention facilities in Serbia, where five persons were killed in the detention facilities of Begejci and Stajićevo, seven at the detention facility in Sremska Mitrovica and one person in Niš. The indictment also included colonel Miroslav Živanović who passed away in the meantime.

Data source: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), County State Attorney’s Office in Osijek, Croatian association of survivors of Serbian prison camps, Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), Humanitarian Law Center.

Marked and photographed: 6.11.2025

Map:

Updated: 15.12.2025