Stajićevo Farm, Republic of Serbia

Location: Stajićevo near Zrenjanin, Republic of Serbia

Importance of the locality:

The Stajićevo Farm (Agricultural Cooperative Livade - Stajićevo) near Zrenjanin was used from 18 November to 22 December 1991 as a detention site for Croats who were brought there by force after the fall of Vukovar. Members of the Croatian armed forces were held at the farm facilities, but the prisoners also included civilians and several doctors. JNA colonel Miroslav Živanović was the head of the detention complex. The Stajićevo Farm was surrounded by a tall barbed wire fence and the prisoners were kept in barns. They were constantly guarded by the military police. The prisoners were kept tied, and it was only after the visit by the International Committee of the Red Cros (ICRC) that they were given access to a toilet, water and blankets. The prisoners were subjected to inhumane conditions and daily abuse, interrogations and beatings.

Entity: Republic of Serbia

Ethnic group: Croats

Area that victims came from: Vukovara (CRO)

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 Stajićevo Farm. 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 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.

Other information:

updated with photos: Center for Public History (CPI), photo author Nedžad Horozović

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