by Slobodan VASKOVIC
Natasa Jankovic was arrested this spring on the border crossing between Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. She had been previously sentenced to a long prison term in a staged trial. Under the strong public pressure and pressure of the international institutions, the trial was repeated and Natasa Jankovic acquitted of all charges and released.
After the release from prison, Natasa Jankovic stated that her greatest desire was that other ethnic Serb prisoners, who, although innocent, have been sentenced to long prison terms after staged trials, also be released.
Mirko Graorac is one of them. In 1996, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the higher court reduced the sentence to 15 years in prison. Graorac was found guilty of committing war crimes in the summer of 1992, in the camp Manjaca near Banja Luka, as a commander of the external camp sentry. He claims that the whole trial was a set up and, as he says, waits for justice.
Beginning of Calvary: Until 1992 Graorac lived in Split [in Croatia]. He had been a policeman all his life and retired just before the beginning of the war in Croatia. In April 1992 he went to his birthplace, the village of Bojinci near Srbac [in Srpska, B-H], to visit his mother, who had been seriously ill with cancer. He was in Bojinci when the war in Bosnia started, and his mother died in May 1992. Since he was unable to return to Split because of fighting, he did odd jobs to earn enough to feed himself and his elderly father. In February 1993 his father died and Graorac stayed in Bojinci until 1994 when he finally got a chance to return to Split, which he immediately did. According to Graorac, the return was also the start of horrible and inhumane suffering, torture. All of this was prompted only by his ethnicity, the fact that he is a Serb.
"They arrested me soon after my return to Split. There were no explanations. Ivica Males and Adnan Kubanic came to get me. In prison Kubanic and Males told me: 'Mirko, you Serb motherfucker, we're going to either kill or expel all Serbs from Croatia. You do not belong here. You're such a fool to come back. We'll make sure you end up in jail for at least 20 years'. To my questions why they were doing this they responded by horrible beatings," Mirko Graorac, currently held in the Croat prison of Lepoglava, says in his letter to Reporter. He further claims that he nearly died because of incessant and fierce beatings. But the beatings were not enough.
"One day they took me to be executed on Katalinic hill. Males and Kubanic took me there based on the orders from the SZUP chief Alojzije Supraha. They brought me back and then broke all of my teeth. They were assisted by Zarko Tola in that," Graorac claims.
The torture went on until April 1996 when the Split District Court found Graorac guilty and sentenced him to twenty years in prison. The main prosecution witnesses in the trial were exactly his torturers Tola and Ugrin.
The two of them were really kept in the camp Manjaca in 1992, and were exchanged later that year.
However, another four prisoners from the Manjaca camp gave a written statement confirming that they never saw Graorac during their imprisonment. The same was confirmed by the guards from the camp. However the district court dismissed that evidence. As well as documents of the Bosnian State Commission for the collection of evidence about war crimes.
"We would like to inform you that the State Commission currently does not have any information that would implicate Mirko Graorac in war crimes committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina," the letter sent by this commission to the Serb Civic Council on June 19, 1996, states.
Farce : After the sentence, Graorac appealed to the Supreme Court of Croatia. Three and a half years later, the Supreme Court annulled the decision of the District Court in Split. The decision was annulled, not because the higher court realized based on evidence that Graorac was innocent, but because of the opinion of the Supreme Court that the district court "during the trial did not fully clarify the status of the Croatian Army on the territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina".
"The repeated trial against Mirko Graorac, sentenced by the Split District Court to twenty years in prison for crimes committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina, that will start on September 27 in the Split District Court, could turn into yet another shame of Croatian judiciary, but this time with international consequences. Namely, it is obvious that the decision of the Supreme Court, which ordered the retrial, is not motivated by legal, but by political concerns. The highest court in Croatia accepted the appeal of the defendant and struck down the initial verdict for only one reason: the claim in the verdict that members of the Croatian Army fought in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The other important violations of the legal procedure mentioned in the appeal were not important. The claim that the Croatian Army had presence in Bosnia-Hercegovina could have far reaching consequences, claims the Supreme Court in its decision in the case, thereby suggesting to the District Court in Split that it inadvertently revealed the secret that the state leadership has unsuccessfully been trying to hide. It is not difficult to guess what Hague investigators would do with the information that a high court in Croatia admits that units of the Croatian Army participated as early as 1992 actively in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Another indicator that the repeated trial against Mirko Graorac will be influenced by extra-judicial and political concerns is the fact that Josip Cule, the judge in trial against Graorac, will not participate in the repeated trial, at his own request," weekly magazine from Zagreb, Nacional commented on the retrial of Graorac under the headline "Supreme Court Defends Tudman's Policy".
The district court was merciless. The "crown prosecution witnesses" were simply "reassigned" from the Croatian Army to the Croatian Defense Council [Bosnian Croat armed forces], the farce was repeated, and Graorac again found guilty and sentenced, this time to 15 years in prison. This time the sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court, probably satisfied that the Croatian Army did not after all participate in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Tribunal: However, Graorac did not give up. On two occasions he requested from the Hague Tribunal to be tried by this institution, but both requests were rejected.
"If the prosecutor did not conduct the investigation in this case and there is no basis to believe that the accused is a war criminal, then there can be no reason to demand that the Hague Tribunal take over the particular case. This is precisely the situation you describe and the prosecutor is unable to intervene in the judicial process in Croatia, as you demand. Besides, I am convinced that the changes in Croatia, including the judiciary and the legal system are moving in the positive direction and, if your assertions are indeed true, and you are innocent, there is no need to lose hope that justice will be served," states the response sent from the Tribunal to Graorac, signed by Anton Nikiforov, special advisor of the prosecutor.
Whether these changes are indeed real, will be found out after the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia to which Graorac appealed the decisions of the District and Supreme Courts.
In the end of his letter Graorac concludes that there is no thing more unjust than "justice".
The article included a part of the AI report that deals with Mirko Graorac: "AI reports that there was a series of arrests in connection with war crimes, but that that organization is concerned because in some cases it is possible that charges are arbitrary, mentioning cases of Jovanka Nenadovic from Pakrac, trial of the so-called Sodolovci group and Mirko Graorac's case.