Four and a half years ago, Mihajlo Hrastov, member of a Croatian special forces unit, murdered 13 imprisoned reserve members of the Yugoslav Peoples Army on a bridge over the Korana river, near Karlovac; first he shot at the unarmed prisoners from a machine gun and then finished them off, execution style, with an additional shot to a head. Hrastov was acquitted by the District Court in Karlovac. In January 1994, Croatian Supreme Court annulled that verdict and ordered a new trial which hasn't taken place until today, two years later. In the meantime, president Tudman decorated Mihajlo Hrastov for a "heroic deed in the war". Ten days ago, after the ceremonial induction of Foreign Minister Mate Granic for a honorary citizen of Karlovac, Hrastov was given a special prize of the Karlovac county as one of the first six local citizens to be honored in that way.
Last year, Sinisa Dvorski, a character from the Kostajnica front with cult like following (one of the first "Croatian national heroes" who is now in jail after admitting the murder of Anton Marcelo Popovic from Vrsar) was tried by a Military court in Karlovac for the attempted murder of five people by a grenade in the Pula restaurant "Admiral". Dvorski was acquitted because of an alibi provided by Sime Marinic, head of local HDZ [Croatian ruling party] in Vrsar, who later paid Dvorski to kill Popovic: Marinic testified that Dvorski had been in his night club when the attack had taken place. Kostajnica Rambo had recently been released from the Croatian Army and the initiative of the Defense Minister Gojko Susak to put him in charge of training of Special Forces units in Zagreb was shelved because of pragmatic reasons.
A year ago, Sinisa Rimac, a member of the First Guard Battalion was decorated by president Tudman for "a heroic deed in the war". A short time before that, at the trial for the bestial murder of the Zec family, Rimac defended himself by silence. He was acquitted because of the lack of evidence. Investigation documents in which Rimac and his accomplices confessed the murder of the Zec family and numerous other crimes against civilians which they had committed as the members of the unit under the command of Tomislav Mercep [member of Croatian parliament], stationed in Pakracka Poljana, were declared legally void. Today Sinisa Rimac attends higher military schools with the state scholarship in order to prepare himself for a future command post [in the Croatian Army].
A year ago, Ivica Besic and Mato Krizanac (also members of the First Guard Battalion which takes care of president Tudman's security) together with another four soldiers broke into Marija Zuzija's apartment in Zagreb in order to evict her family from the apartment. Epilogue: a raped Ukrainian girl; two of her friends beaten up and robbed; the Zuzija family out in the street. Unfortunate Ukrainian girls were taken to a prison that night and later "disappeared". Despite witnesses, the state prosecutor still hasn't indicted the accused for rape, robbery and assault. Instead, Ivica Besic and Mato Krizanac, elite Croatian soldiers, sued Feral Tribune which had written about this case, because of "violation of privacy, honor and dignity".
These are only some of examples which demonstrate to which extent the myth about Indomitable Croatian Knight can be a bloody illusion. If we didn't have well intentions we would compare it with the recent painful debate in the Parliament about "the Hague law". Even the opposition leaders, pleading for the adoption of the law on "practical grounds", denied "the unbiased character of the Tribunal in the Hague" (Racan [leader of the Social democrats, former Communists]) , claimed that "the international community uses the Tribunal to establish the artificial balance of guilt for the war in the former Yugoslavia," and added that they would "vote for the law" but "with big qualms" (Tomac).
The hypocritical Croatian parliament has never questioned work of Croatian courts nor has anyone expressed "qualms" because of mass acquittals of knights- criminals. Even during the recent debate, no one expressed "moral dilemma" because Dario Kordic, indicted for war crimes by the Tribunal, spends a lot of time in Zagreb and frequents party and state functions; or because Ivica Rajic, under protection of the Ministry of defense, lives in the Ministry owned apartment in Split and gives heart rending interviews to obscure newspapers.
The protective mechanism which has, almost without exception, turned the perpetrators of cruel crimes into "heroes of the Patriotic war" is not of spiritual nature. Croatian "legal state" did this through its concrete decisions behind which remains a paper trail. The authorities showered decorations and rewards on these criminals to elevate a formal release from guilt to a moral victory. However, spiritual climate in which a crime is treated as a shameful detail or "necessary evil", and becomes a part of the Greater National Interest, was not engendered only by the ruling party but by the whole Croatian political elite.
In the end a steep price has to paid for that. While anonymous corpses are falling left and right and disappear in the darkness of police files, it is sufficient that Dvorski, or someone else, murders a too well known individual to disturb the idyllic picture. The price for that false idyll is the price for the lack of freedom: Croatian political elite, that numerous hypocritical club, has long time ago willingly become a prisoner of the Greater National Interest, which is, by definition, common and romantic and must remain unblemished at any cost. Evan at the price of blindness. Having in mind that "popular representatives" also have to consider a possible loss of office, in extreme situations they have two possibilities: to become murderers or sycophants, and always mercenaries.