Crimes in Trnopolje were also listed in the ICTY's indictment of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, who died mid-trial in March 2006.

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.

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.

[4] The camp formed inside it was established on the grounds of a local primary school, which was named after the concept of Brotherhood and Unity (Osnovna škola Bratstvo–Jedinstvo).

The nightly terror of possibly being called out for rape or other abuses was reportedly a severe mental constraint even for short-term detainees in the camp.

This phenomenon led British journalist Ed Vulliamy to describe Trnopolje as "a perverse haven" for the Bosniaks and Croats of Prijedor.

[5] In 1997, the British magazine Living Marxism (LM) claimed that footage filmed at Trnopolje deliberately misrepresented the situation in the camp.

Following ITN's victory in a court case in which the evidence given by the camp doctor led LM to abandon its defence, the magazine declared itself bankrupt, avoiding payment of the large damages awarded.

[7][8] During Milomir Stakić's trial, ICTY prosecutors claimed that several hundred non-Serbs were killed at Trnopolje between May and November 1992.

[11] Milomir Stakić was convicted for his role in setting up the camps at Trnopolje, Keraterm and Omarska in July 2003 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

[17] Zoran Žigić, a taxi-driver from Prijedor, was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment in November 2001 for abusing, beating, torturing, raping and killing detainees at Trnopolje, as well as at Keraterm and Omarska.

[3] Crimes committed in Trnopolje, Keraterm and Omarska were listed in the ICTY's indictment of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević following the war.

The Court stated in its judgment: Having carefully examined the evidence presented before it, and taken note of that presented to the ICTY, the Court considers that it has been established by fully conclusive evidence that members of the protected group were systematically victims of massive mistreatment, beatings, rape and torture causing serious bodily and mental harm during the conflict and, in particular, in the detention camps.