by Ivica DIKIC and Boris RASETA
Jovanka Nenadovic, born in 1933, in the village of Kusonje is a Serb. Sixty six years later, more specifically on January 7, 1999, her name ended up on a collective indictment issued by the County Court in Pozega. The indictment states that "during the investigation a witness stated that he had heard that Jovanka Nenadovic participated in torture of prisoners." The witness gave that statement in 1992 and in the meantime Mrs. Nenadovic has returned to Croatia and regulated her status. Then, she was recently arrested and, as she is gravely ill, she is currently held in the Zagreb Hospital for Prisoners. The witness who supposedly heard something about Jovanka Nenadovic's criminal activities has died in the meantime, and her fate is totally uncertain.
At the time he was arrested, in 1999, Dragan Vranesevic was the Police Chief in Ilok. In 1992, the court in Sisak initiated a judicial process against him in which no concrete evidence was presented, as the witnesses did not blame Vranesevic for anything. Eight years later, the very same witnesses suddenly freshened up their memory and became absolutely convinced in the things they did not even mention in the previous trial. Namely, now they recall that Dragan Vranesevic is a notorious war criminal. That was enough for the Sisak County Court to sentence this man to fifteen years in prison, and the verdict was later confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Or, consider Mirko Graorac. This pre-war traffic policeman in Split went in the early spring of 1992 to northern Bosnia to assist his gravely ill parents. Soon afterwards the war started and he had to stay in Bosnia somewhat longer than initially planned. He returned to Split in 1994, where he had left a wife and two children. He was immediately thoroughly "processed" by the Service for the Protection of Constitutional Order [one of Croatian secret services]. Everything was fine until mid-1995 when he was arrested and accused of being the commander of the outer sentry in the Manjaca camp. A long trial was organized. The key witnesses were Vlado Ugrin a SIS [Bosnian Croat secret service] officer, and Alojzije Supraha the chief of the Split SZUP center. Graorac was sentenced to twenty years in prison. After the appeal lodged by his lawyer the whole trial was repeated and the sentence reduced to fifteen years in prison. The verdict, despite very shaky evidence and witnesses, was confirmed by the Supreme Court.
"According to the data from March 2000, 554 persons have received final verdicts for war crimes. We can state that about 90 percent of these individuals have been tried and sentenced in absentia."
However, the data of the Justice Ministry are rather stale or one of Ivanisevic's clerks is suffering from chronic laziness. The Justice Ministry is sending journalists information from a year ago and, naturally, that information is not relevant anymore. Namely, according to the data of the Serb Democratic Forum from September, 2000, 69 ethnic Serb citizens of Croatia are serving sentences for genocide and war crimes in Croatian prisons. Data offered by the UN Commission for Human Rights are also much more precise than those provided by the Justice Ministry. They confirm the figure of 554 verdicts for war crimes and genocide in the period between 1991 and 1999, but they specify that 470 individuals have been tried and sentenced in absentia. Their information also indicates that in the same time period 4396 criminal acts have been reported, resulting in 1349 indictments, while at the moment there are about 1,000 valid arrest warrants for Serbs suspected of committing war crimes and acts of genocide. County Court in Pozega and Bjelovar, as well as in Split and Osijek, have distinguished themselves by the number of initiated judicial procedures against the alleged or true war criminals.
"Several individuals are serving their sentences in the Lepoglava Prison although they were at one point released based on Tudman's amnesty law. When they were released and expressed the desire to stay in Croatia, their alleged crimes were simply prequalified, and they were sent back to prison," says Srecko Dragic , the man who spent five years in Croatian prisons. He is originally from Knin and earned the five year prison sentence because of participation in Serb paramilitary units. He was captured in the "Storm" and then sent to the Split prison in Bilice, which he mostly recalls by incessant beatings. Besides in Bilice he served his sentence in the prisons in Lepoglava and Osijek.
"Some individuals, who are sentenced to twenty years in prisons, had trial hearings lasting less than one hour, without witnesses, defense, anything. Those people were condemned and some of them will definitely die in prison, although they may be innocent. I say maybe, because they did not have fair trials and had no possibility to prove their innocence," says Dragic.
However, in this sad story, it should be noted that the new authorities continue with the tested Tudman's practice. Namely, no one has even considered a possible reexamination of all those war crimes and genocide trials, and people who were unfairly and unjustly condemned can only continue sending public appeals in hope that someone will find mercy and hear their cries from the prisons all over this country.
FT: What are the chief characteristics of the trials of ethnic Serb citizens accused of war crimes?
BORCANIN: People who were caught after "Flash" and "Storm" were quickly processed and condemned for war crimes. In most cases evidence and proposals offered by the defense were rejected. Only the evidence offered by the state prosecutor was allowed by the courts. Many facts and legal qualifications from the indictments could not be described as war crimes. However, it was sufficient to establish that someone was a member of Serb armed forces to condemn him for a war crime. There were no attempts to try to establish what concrete act that person committed, apart from being a soldier. Consider a formulation used in one of the verdicts: "The defense of the defendant, according to the opinion of the court, is truthful, but is irrelevant".
In Many cases there were group trials. What was the standard of these trials?
In these cases there was no attempt to establish individual responsibility. There were many cases in which, after the enactment of the Amnesty Law, the indictments were simply modified, on the basis of the same evidence and facts, and people were then tried for war crimes.
Were there cases with forced confessions?
Yes, there were cases in which confessions were forced by torture and physical maltreatment. I am convinced that the pressure of politicians on the courts is extremely intense. For example, a young man, Sinisa Lukic, was condemned for a war crime by a lower court and sentenced to three years in prison. After an appeal his sentence was increased to five years in prison. I do not want to imply that everyone currently in prison is innocent, but I am convinced that a good portion of them are innocent of war crimes. They may have committed other criminal acts, such as participation in an armed rebellion, but those acts are covered by the Amnesty law.
Do you think that in this case we had a collective presumption of guilt?
Yes, you could say that. I do not know if you know, but so far in Croatia not a single ethnic Croat has been even accused of war crimes. It is obvious that Milan Vukovic's doctrine, according to which Croats could not commit war crimes, has been put into practice. These trials were more trials of a certain policy than to individuals. Let's quote from one verdict: "This court concludes that it is a notorious fact that there was a plan for the creation of Greater Serbia," which immediately implied that the condemned individual was guilty, although his role was totally insignificant.
What was the role of the Supreme Court in all that?
The Supreme Court as a rule confirmed lower court's verdicts. Frequently, it increased sentences.
Did you demand retrials in some cases?
There can be no retrials. So far, this is only theoretically possible, but the practice of our courts, including the Supreme Court, excludes that possibility. Many of the condemned individuals with whom I had an opportunity to talk demanded to be tried again by the Hague Tribunal, as they have lost all trust in the Croatian judiciary.
In that case, do those who were condemned without any evidence have any hope of fair treatment in the future?
I think that the State Prosecutor's office should reexamine those cases in which proper procedure was not observed and demand retrials, instead of leaving initiative to the defendants. By doing that the Prosecutor's Office would prove its magnanimity and the will to really strengthen the rule of law.
Klickovic, Keskenovic and Halavanja awaited the end of peaceful reintegration, on January 15, 1998, in Sodolovci, near Osijek. They did not fell guilty and, unlike some of their fellow residents, who quickly departed for Yugoslavia, they were not bothered by the fact that less than three weeks after the departure of UNTAES, on February 4, 1998, the Croatian police upon entry into Sodolovci established that the three of them were condemned for war crimes. They had guarantees that they would be able to defend from freedom in the new trial. This was promised to them by Jure Radic, Vesna Skare-Ozbolt and the former Justice Minister, Miroslav Separovic.
Weeks and moths went by and the Sodolovci trio lived peacefully in their village despite increasingly shrill media cries that Chetniks and war criminals were freely walking around Croatia. Then the Croatian judiciary took charge. After the County Court in Osijek on May 21, 1998, rejected the request of the "Sodolovci Group" for a retrial (that Keskenovic and others submitted on November 21, 1997), and Petar Kljajic, the president of that court, on two occasions demanded that the Police take into custody condemned war criminals, the president of the Supreme Court, Milan Vukovic on July 20 rejected the decision of the County Court in Osijek and opened the path for a retrial.
Soon afterwards, on August 28, Klickovic, Keskenovic, and Halavanja were arrested and taken to the investigative prison. However, three days later, allegedly after an intervention by the American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, according to the rumors circulation through legal circles in Osijek, Klickovic, Keskenovic and Halavanja were urgently released to defend themselves from freedom. The new trial started on October 10, 1998, but the County Court in Osijek simply confirmed its former verdicts. Keskenovic was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Klickovic and Halavanja to 11 years each.
However, on November 24, 1998, the Supreme Court, because of a series of omissions, annulled the County Court verdict. The Sodolovci trio was freed again. The Supreme Court established significant violations of the criminal procedure law and decided to annul the verdict and return the case to the County Court. Last year the Count Court in Osijek acquitted the whole group. The indictment charged them with war crimes, accusing them of shooting at Djakovo and nearby villages in 1991 and 1992 from the occupied territory, and by doing that killing 10 and wounding 30 civilians. The whole case was followed by speculation according to which the harsh sentences for war crimes, in spite of the inability to establish who exactly fired grenades that killed certain civilians, was reached under pressure and with the goal of giving impetus to the emigration of Serbs from Croatia.