Under the EU’s new Pact on Asylum and Migration, Croatia is considering repurposing a once secret Yugoslav-era airbase as a detention and processing centre, to the alarm of rights groups and locals.
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In 1995, after a lightning military operation called ‘Storm’ effectively ended the war in Croatia, Pave Zivkovic went to inspect what was left of his former workplace.
An aircraft mechanic, Zivkovic had spent seven years working in a top-secret Yugoslav airbase, built beneath the Pljesevica mountain on what would later become Croatia’s border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Zeljava Military Airbase was a feat of Yugoslav engineering: four tunnels, eight metres high and 20 metres wide, carved from the foot of the mountain to accommodate up to 58 fighter jets ready to take to the skies at a moment’s notice.
Zivkovic, today in his sixties, recalled working on the jets as the best job he ever had, but when the Yugoslav People’s Army abandoned the base in May 1992, it laid dynamite to damage the tunnels and render them unusable by either Croatian or Bosnian forces.
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