On Wednesday, the County Court in Zadar sentenced Zorana Banic to 13 years in prison. The nurse from Zemunik was found guilty for war crimes committed against civilians in the village of Skabrnja, in 1991, when 34 persons were murdered. Skabrinja is one of the biggest Croat traumas from the last war. Serbs carried out a massacre there, the village was totally destroyed and burned to the ground, while the surviving Croats were expelled.
The verdict specifies that Zorana Banic committed a war crime as follows: as a member of the Army of the so-called Serb Autonomous Region of Krajina, armed with a machine gun, she entered the village of Skabrinja on the critical day and participated in forcing of civilians from cellars. Most of these civilians were women, elderly and children. During the trial it was established that she personally did not kill anyone, did not even shoot. She claims that during the massacre she wasn't even in Skabrinja. One witness confirmed that at the time of the massacre she and Banic hid together in a cellar in Zemunik.
Zorana Banic found a lawyer who was prepared to defend her in court after much difficulty. This was a repeated trial, because in the first trial she was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison. The audience in the courtroom loudly protested the new, according to them, too lenient verdict. Banic's defense attorney announced that he would send the case file to the Hague Tribunal, stressing that numerous individuals had already been sentenced for the same crime and that it did not make sense "that ten persons killed one victim".
Two-three weeks earlier, the County Court in Karlovac cleared Mihajlo Hrastov of all charges. Hrastov was a member of the special police forces. In the fall of 1991 he murdered thirteen Serb prisoners of war on the Korana bridge in Karlovac. He shot them down with a machine gun, then he switched to a handgun, and finally tried out his carving skills. The court concluded that the massacre was committed in self-defense. Although [Serb] reservists, who were mobilized by force, were unarmed and, according to some NGOs, tied by wire.
The Court in Karlovac has already acquitted Hrastov twice of the same charges. Eight years ago the Supreme Court annulled the first acquittal, which was now confirmed. Both times the audience cheered and screamed with joy. In the meantime Hrastov was treated as a hero. President Tudman decorated him for "heroic deeds in the war" and he was publicly recognized by his county.
Zorana Banic was sentenced to 13 years in prison de facto only because she was seen with the Serb paramilitary units, which committed a massacre of Croats, although it was established that she did not participate in the massacre. On the other hand Hrastov was acquitted even though he massacred 13 unarmed prisoners of war, which according to the court was self-defense. Those two cases clearly illustrate widely advertised readiness and capability of the Croat judiciary to try our own criminals. Here, justice is still an abstract term. Whatever Racan tells Carla Del Ponte, the Hague Tribunal, and the international public about that.