Biweekly Report on War Crime Trials / 31 October 2013
The charges against Josip Boljkovac for execution of civilians in the mid-1945 upheld by the Indictment Court / The
93-year-old Boljkovac was charged in his capacity as the Chief of the
Committee of the People’s Security Department (OZNA) for the Town of
Karlovac and the Karlovac County according to which he was held
responsible for the arrests and executions of the civilians suspected
of collaboration with Ustasha authorities.
One more indictment against the ex-commander of the military barracks in Osijek / On
15 October 2013, the Osijek County State Attorney’s Office brought an
indictment against Boro Ivanović also known as Horse [konj] for war
crimes against civilians and prisoners of war.
He was charged that in
his capacity as commander of the 12th Proletarian Mechanized Brigade of
JNA and commander to subordinate members of the local territorial
defences and volunteers from Serbia, in the period from 7 July to
December 1991, he ordered non-selective artillery and mortar attacks on
Tordinci, Ćelije, Orlovnjak, Ernestinovo, Laslovo, Antunovac and
Palača, including their occupation.
Although he knew that his
subordinates were unauthorisedly apprehending, abusing and killing
civilians, he failed to take any action to prevent such activities and
punish the perpetrators. Boro Ivanović also known as Horse is still not
available to Croatian judiciary.
Continuing protests because of the prosecution for war crimes of Croatian Homeland war veterans / Violent
removal of Latin-Cyrillic signs in Vukovar, which continued throughout
Croatia, has led to a revival of inter-
ethnic mistrust and encouraged
actions which do not contribute to the prosecution of all perpetrators
of war crimes.
The association Women in the Homeland War – Zadar, on 17
October 2013 before the Split County Court, organized a protest which
gathered its twenty or so members – mostly wives and family members of
persons prosecuted for war crimes. They requested “a review of all
trials against Homeland war veterans who have been convicted, indicted
or under suspicion” for war crimes.
Former JNA officer, earlier convicted in his absence, has been arrested / Slobodan
Dotlić was arrested at the border crossing between Croatia and Hungary
on 18 October 2013. He had been convicted earlier to 15 years in prison
for war crime against civilians which he committed by shelling Gospić.
A person accused of the war crime committed in Croatia apprehended in Germany / According
to the information conveyed by many internet media portals, during the
routine control of a bus, on 19 October 2013, near the town of Passau
at the German-Austrian border, German police apprehended a citizen of
Serbia.
The stated person had been listed among those searched for based
on the international APB, and the person had been charged of abusing
several prisoners of war on the territory of the Republic of Croatia in
1991.
News from the ICTY
a) Implications of the Harhoff issue / On
07 October 2013, by majority vote and with a dissenting opinion by the
judge Liu, the Commission appointed by the ICTY’s Vice-President
dismissed the request made by the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor for
the renewed revision of the decision dated on 28 August 2013 according
to which the motion of the accused Vojislav Šešelj for exclusion of the
judge Frederik Harhoff from Šešelj’s case had been upheld.
b)
Prlić et al. case – the motion upheld confirming that Slobodan Praljak
is able to fully cover the cost of his defence counsel; the Appeal
Chamber to render its judgment on the first-instance judgment not
earlier than year 2017 / The Appeal proceedings in the case
against Prlić et al. will be finalised in the mid-2017 – this
information may be grasped from the ICTY President Theodor Meron’s
address to the United Nations General Assembly held on 14 October 2013
during the presentation of the Annual Report.
In the attachment below, there is the electronic version of the report.
Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past
