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Picaskandal

Tudman's Statue On Serb Orthodox Church's Property

by G.B.

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, December 1, 2001

The avalanche of setting up of monuments and busts of the late president Tudman has been spreading through Croatia. Thus, in early November a great leader's bust was erected in Pakrac, a town devastated by the war. The authorities in Pakrac decided to place the bronze statue at the Franjo Tudman square, at the spot where a Serb Orthodox Church stood until WWII. According to Pakrac protohierarch Luka Bosanac, until [Communist] nationalization in 1962, that plot of land was the property of the Serb Orthodox Church (SPC). In mid 1997, the SPC submitted a request for the de-nationalization of the land. Since the church of St. Ilija [Elijah] was destroyed during NDH [Independent State of Croatia, pro-Nazi puppet state during WWII; carried out genocide of Serbs, Jews, and Roma], the local faithful used to gather next to the cross which was set up at the entrance to the fenced off plot.

Protohierarch Bosanac explains that the trees around the cross were cut down in the early nineties, and a few months ago, in preparation for the erection of the statue, the fence (made of cast iron with small stone pillars) was also demolished. The foundations of the church were also removed. "I complained to the institute for the protection of cultural heritage. That plot of land must be out of bounds as far as any new construction is concerned, because it is in the process of de-nationalization based on a request submitted by the SPC," protoheirarch Bosanac claims, expressing satisfaction that the stone fence had been returned in the meantime. A court hearing was held fifteen days ago, but a representative of the town of Pakrac failed to attend the hearing. The local urban development clerk, Snjezana Delac, who issued the permit for the erection of Tudman's burst, stated for Picaskandal that the permit was issued based on the valid title which lists that plot as a protected commemorative zone. The property title was on the other hand issued by the Pakrac cadastre office, obviously totally disregarding the ongoing court case.


Picaskandal

Investigation Against Sibenik State Prosecutor

by D.P.

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, October 20, 2001

The State Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Croatia has initiated an internal investigation against the State Prosecutor in Sibenik, Zeljko Zganjer, under suspicion of obstruction (read suppression of evidence) of an investigation into the crimes committed against captured Serbs after the liberation of the villages on the Miljavacki plateau in June 1992. Then, as the deputy state military attorney, Zganjer, among other, attended exhumation of corpses of 29 Serbs who had been thrown into the Bacic ravine. According to the former chief of Military Police in Sibenik, Mario Barisic, a witness also in the case regarding crimes committed in the military prison Lora in Split, Zganjer possesses a complete "photo-report of the exhumation and of the condition of the corpses" whose hands were tied with wire behind the back.

Zganjer was publicly condemned in Latinica entitled "Storm over Krajina", dedicated to war crimes, also because he was aware that some of the murdered Serbs, whose bodies were pulled out of the mentioned ravine, had previously been registered as prisoners of war. Barisic without hesitation accuses the then deputy commander of the 113rd brigade of the Croatian Army for logistics, currently the director of the company Luka-Sibenik [Sibenik port authority] and former captain of the Yugoslav People's Army Davor Skugor or ordering that the prisoners be returned from the prison in Kuline to the Miljevacki plateau to collect corpses of their fellow soldiers and throw them into the Bacic ravine. Those prisoners saw among the corpses bodies of Serbs who had been alive and captured after the fighting on the Miljevacki plateau, as they later told a Serbian human rights organization after being exchanged!

Picaskandal's journalist has learned first hand that both Zeljko Zganjer and Davor Skugor are under investigation. Skugor has, precisely because of the "swift work" of the Sibenik State Prosecutor, become in the meantime a respected businessman in Kresimir's city [Sibenik].


Picaskandal

Slow Justice At Court in Gospic

by G.B.

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, October 13, 2001

After full eight years of judicial complications Sofija Suput from Gospic still hasn't been able to regain possession of the apartment in which she lived with her husband Bogdan, murdered in the liquidations of Serbs from Gospic, until October 1991. A group of defendants, led by Oreskovic and Norac is currently being tried in Rijeka for the crimes that include the murder of Bogdan Suput.

Croatian Forests company, the owner of the apartment in which the Suputs lived as legal tenants since 1966, has filed a suit demanding that Sofia be evicted from the apartment, although the management of Croatian Forests has been aware for a while that Sofia Suput hasn't been living in that apartment since 1991. Namely, in mid November, Ivan Bekavac, a handyman working at the Gospic health center, illegally moved into that apartment.

The Suputs encountered the beginning of the war in Donja Bistra, in Zagorje, where their son was building a house. After receiving official summons to return to work, Bogdan returned to Gospic on October 4, where he was the manager of Croatian Forests. Immediately after his return to Gospic he was apprehended by the Gospic Police, but he was released a day later. Despite warnings by well-meaning friends from the Police to leave Gospic, Bogdan did not want to leave Lika. He has been missing since October 17, 1991, when he contacted his wife for the last time.

His wife Sofija, started her search. She sent telegrams, went to the Parliament and Government, wrote even to the late president Tudman, embassies... She visited 37 different institutions and organizations. In the end she found out that Bogdan was arrested on October 17, 1991 and murdered a day later in Lipova Glavica near Perusic. On December 22, the Suputs were informed that Bogdan's corpse had been found together with another 24 bodies at the spot of the execution. He was shot and then his body was set on fire, just like most of other victims.

Bekavac exploited the situation and broke into the apartment that he refuses to leave until today. Furthermore, he has threatened to kill Sofija if she returns to Gospic. Croatian Forests are demanding from the court to repossess the apartment based on the government decree which states that tenants lose tenancy rights if they don't use their apartment for more than six months. Of course, that is not in dispute, given that the Suputs haven't been in their apartment since 1991. However, Sofija Suput claims that she submitted a request for purchase of the apartment before the legal deadline, but since her husband, a civilian without any links with the war, was murdered in Gospic, she hasn't gone back afraid that she would also be murdered. The case has been shuttled for eight years between the Municipal Court and the County Court, while only recently Sofija was invited by the Gospic court so that a commission could evaluate her psychological condition in 1991 and determine whether she could return to Gospic in 1991, as if it were simply a matter of her choice.


Picaskandal

Ljubica Solar's Murder in European Court

by V.M.

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, October 13, 2001

Ljubica Solar, nineteen years old woman from Sisak was murdered on September 17, 1991, in the apartment in which she lived with her boyfriend Dusko Malovic. The bullet came through a window, and could have been fired from the nearby police station.

Seeking the truth about Ljubica's death, her mother Vjera has filed a suit with the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg "due to the fact that the judiciary, police, and prosecution haven't done anything to find the murderer in this case," and "because of deliberate delays in the civil suit trial for damages for defamation of the mother of the murder victim in the newspapers by the former chief of the crime department of the Police station in Sisak."

Therefore, policemen and judges will finally get a chance to respond to the questions why the investigative magistrate never made it to the crime scene, although he was obliged by law to do so, why all the necessary forensic examinations were not conducted, why the autopsy of the corpse was not conducted although the investigative magistrate requested it, who had the motive to try to obstruct the investigation, and clarify a whole series of details which make it plausible that murderers of Ljubica Solar were not found only because someone did not want to find them.


Translated on August 2, 2002
Feral Tribune