Korana bridge killings
Korana bridge killings | |
---|---|
Part of the Croatian War of Independence and the Yugoslav Wars | |
Location | Korana bridge, Karlovac, Croatia |
Date | 21 September 1991 |
Target | Yugoslav People's Army reservists |
Attack type | Mass shooting, summary executions |
Deaths | 13 |
Injured | 2 |
Convicted | Mihajlo Hrastov (4 years' imprisonment) |
Thirteen
Events commemorating the victims have caused substantial controversy within Karlovac and have been disrupted multiple times by Croatian war veterans. At a war veterans' event in 2021, Croatian president Zoran Milanović made comments that were widely perceived as being supportive of Hrastov. Later that year, on the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre, the Karlovac town council voted to name the bridge where the killings took place after Hrastov's special police unit. At a ceremony held later that day, a mural of Hrastov was unveiled next to the bridge.
Background
In 1988-89, a series of street protests dubbed
In April–May 1990,
On 19 May 1991, Croatia held a referendum on whether to secede from Yugoslavia. Largely boycotted by the Serb minority, the referendum passed with 94 percent voting in favour.[3] On 25 June, Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally declared independence, a move that prompted a brief and ill-fated military intervention by the JNA in Slovenia which came to be known as the Ten-Day War. As part of the Brioni Agreement of 18 July, representatives of Slovenia and Croatia agreed to delay their countries' formal independence by three months.[6] On 14 September, the Croatian leadership decided to begin blockading JNA barracks on the territory of Croatia.[7] On 8 October, Slovene and Croatian officials announced they would fully implement their independence declarations. Open conflict soon erupted across much of central and eastern Croatia between Croatian military and paramilitary units and the JNA, whose status on the territory of Croatia was left ambiguous under the terms of the Brioni Agreement.[6] This escalation was accompanied by the expulsion of Croats and other non-Serbs from areas where Serb paramilitaries established military control.[7] Meanwhile, Serbs living in Croatian towns, especially near the front lines, were subjected to various forms of harassment and attacks.[8]
Prior to the war, Karlovac was a prosperous Baroque town known for its beer production.[9] By 1991, the municipality of Karlovac was home to approximately 22,000 ethnic Serbs.[10] The town itself had around 14,500 Serb inhabitants, who accounted for 24.2 percent of its overall population.[11] It figured prominently in the ideology of Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj, who envisaged creating a Greater Serbia along the Virovitica–Karlovac–Karlobag line.[12] The JNA had at least ten barracks, depots and other facilities in and around Karlovac, including an artillery brigade garrison, a light air defense regiment, a T-34 storage facility and engineer training facilities.[13] By 18 September, the JNA had secured Petrinja, crossed the left bank of the Kupa River and reached the outskirts of Karlovac.[14] The loss of Karlovac, which lay not far from the Slovenian border, would have effectively severed Croatia's coastal areas from the rest of the country.[15] By the time of the killings at the Korana bridge, heavy JNA shelling had resulted in extensive damage to Karlovac's historic town centre.[16]
Killings
According to an account published by Amnesty International, on the evening of 21 September 1991, a group of predominantly Serb JNA reservists headed from Slunj towards Karlovac with the intention of relieving a besieged JNA garrison in the town. Upon reaching the bridge over the Korana River, they were intercepted by a local special unit which ordered them to surrender.[17] One of the survivors, reservist Svetozar Šarac, stated that he and the other reservists stepped out of their vehicle in order to surrender and had clearly shown their intention to do so. They put their weapons and equipment on the pavement and lay on their stomachs, folding their arms behind their necks.[9]
The reservists were then reportedly split in two, with nine being driven to the local police headquarters and later taken to Zagreb. The remaining reservists stayed at the bridge under the guard of police officer Mihajlo Hrastov and other law enforcement officials, who were waiting for vehicles from the Karlovac police headquarters to come and collect them. As they waited, three main battle tanks from the local JNA garrison fired at the bridge from a distance of 500 metres (1,600 ft). At this point, the reservists reportedly shouted or signaled to those in charge of the tanks to stop firing, which they did.[17]
According to Šarac, the reservists were then ordered to step off the bridge and walk on a path leading to a fishermen's hut where they were again told to lie down. Shortly thereafter, one of the reservists had his throat slit. Šarac recounted that they were then ordered to go back to the bridge.[9] Citing media reports, Amnesty International reported in 1991 that Hrastov had ordered the reservists to walk to the other side of the bridge and to line up against a parapet, at which point he began shooting at them.[17] Šarac's testimony deviates from this account. According to him, three masked individuals carrying automatic rifles approached them from the direction of the Korana Hotel and opened fire.[9] The victims of the massacre were later identified as Mile and Nikola Babić, Vaso Bižić, Svetozar Gojković, Zoran Komadina, Božo Kozlina, Milenko Lukač, Slobodan Milovanović, Mile Peurača, Nebojša Popović, Milić Savić, Jovan Sipić and Miloš Srdić. All were from the nearby village of Krnjak and its outskirts. Šarac, Duško Mrkić, Nebojša Jasnić and Branko Mađarac survived by jumping into the river.[18]
In a report published shortly after the killings, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior described Hrastov as the sole perpetrator. It asserted that he had been distressed by the incoming tank fire and shot the prisoners in a panic. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the bodies of the dead were brought to the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Zagreb, where postmortem examinations were performed. Several days later, the bodies of the killed reservists were returned to their families. A medical commission from Vojnić reported that several of the bodies showed signs of severe mutilation.[17]
Aftermath
Legal proceedings
Karlovac County Court
Karlovac's District Public Prosecutor formally filed criminal charges against Hrastov on 22 September 1991.
In 2000, Hrastov's retrial commenced before the Karlovac County Court.
Supreme Court of Croatia
In 2008, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court for a third time. On this occasion, the Supreme Court decided it would preside over a third retrial itself and subsequently convicted Hrastov, sentencing him to eight years' imprisonment. On 24 November 2009, the conviction was upheld on appeal but Hrastov's sentence was reduced to seven years' imprisonment. In reaching its decision, the Supreme Court indicated that it considered Hrastov's military service during the war to have been a mitigating factor.[24] The Association of Police Special Forces in Karlovac County expressed "bitterness" at the decision and made an appeal to veterans' organizations to refrain from "emotional reactions". The Croatian Cultural Council called the verdict "shameful and unsustainable", describing Hrastov as "a symbol of Karlovac's defence and a hero of the Homeland War".[9]
In 2011, Hrastov was released after the Constitutional Court overturned his conviction, ruling that the Supreme Court's failure to publish the verdict had violated Hrastov's human rights. By this point, the trial had become one of the longest in Croatian judicial history.[25] On 7 September 2012, the Supreme Court once again found Hrastov found guilty of killing the reservists and sentenced him to four years' imprisonment. In its ruling, the court declared that Hrastov's actions had constituted a war crime. Judge Žarko Dundović justified the relatively short sentence on the grounds that Hrastov did not otherwise have a criminal history, that he was 70 percent disabled and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that his wife was also ill.[22] Zoran Pušić, president of the Citizens' Committee for Human Rights (GOLJP), remarked at a subsequent press conference that "it is difficult to see how four years in prison could be an adequate sentence for killing 13 people." Veselinka Kastratović, a representative of the non-governmental organization Center for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights, noted that the Supreme Court had failed to properly examine testimonies which indicate that there were other perpetrators in addition to Hrastov who were involved in the massacre.[26] On 7 May 2015, the Supreme Court upheld Hrastov's four-year sentence. On this occasion, the ruling failed to explicitly refer to the massacre as a war crime, describing it instead as "the unlawful killing and wounding of enemies."[27]
In April 2021, Hrastov complained to the
Commemorations
In September 2013, to mark the 22nd anniversary of the massacre, mourners placed flowers and candles at the Korana bridge. This makeshift memorial was quickly removed by Croatian war veterans. Alojzije Čerkez, the president of the Karlovac branch of the Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans' Association (HVIDR-a), described it as "a provocation which must be cut off at the roots."[29] On 21 September 2020, the Serbian National Council held a ceremony at the Church of St. Nicholas in Karlovac to mark the 29th anniversary of the killings.[30] The ceremony was originally intended to be held at the bridge, but was moved to the church after Croatian war veterans organized demonstrations on and around the bridge.[31] Prior to the planned gathering, Karlovac mayor Damir Mandić wrote a post on Facebook discouraging the organizers from holding a ceremony at the bridge and accused them of attempting "to deny the Greater Serbia policy of [Slobodan Milošević]," a claim the organizers rejected.[32]
On 1 July 2021, Croatian president
References
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- ^ a b Biondich 2011, p. 209
- ^ ISBN 978-1-5575-3617-4.
- ^ Goldstein 1999, p. 212
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Jungvirth, Goran (2 May 2009). "Croatian Court Convicts Senior Policeman in Marathon Case". Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
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- ^ Goldstein 1999, p. 233
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- ^ a b c d Amnesty International (November 1991). "Yugoslavia – Torture and Deliberate and Arbitrary Killings in War Zones" (PDF). London, England: Amnesty International Publications. pp. 8–9.
- ^ "30. godišnjica zločina na Koranskom mostu". Documenta (in Croatian). 21 September 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Civil and Political Rights in Croatia (Report). Helsinki, Finland: Human Rights Watch. 1 October 1995. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
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- ^ Narodne Novine (7 July 1995). "Odluka kojom se odlikuju Redom Nikole Šubića Zrinskog" (in Croatian). Zagreb, Croatia: Government of Croatia. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ a b Pavelic, Boris (10 September 2012). "Croatian Policeman Jailed After Marathon Trial". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Pavelic, Boris (3 April 2013). "Far Right Rears its Head Again in Croatia". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ a b Amnesty International (2010). "Behind a Wall of Silence: Prosecution of War Crimes in Croatia". London, England: Amnesty International Publications. pp. 24–25, 49. Archived from the original on 30 December 2020.
- ^ Pavelic, Boris (30 January 2012). "Hrastov War Crimes Trial in Croatia Restarts". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Pavelic, Boris (10 September 2012). "Hrastov's sentence 'Too Short', Say NGOs". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Milekic, Sven (7 May 2015). "Croatian Policeman Jailed After Longest-Ever War Case". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Vladisavljevic, Anja (8 April 2021). "Croatia Orders Ex-Policeman to Compensate for Yugoslav Troops' Murders". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Pavelic, Boris (23 September 2013). "Croatia Memorial To Murdered Yugoslav Troops Destroyed". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Cimeša, Milan; Borković, Goran (21 September 2020). "Održana komemoracija za žrtve s Koranskog mosta u Karlovcu". Novosti (in Serbian). Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ a b Pušić, Marko (20 September 2021). "Hrastov je pobio 13 zarobljenih rezervista. Mural je već dobio, a po njegovoj postrojbi nazvat će se i most". Jutarnji list (in Croatian). Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Vladisavljevic, Anja (21 September 2020). "Killings of Yugoslav Prisoners of War Commemorated in Croatia". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ Pušić, Mario (1 July 2021). "Milanović govorio u prilog Hrastovu: 'Postoji razlika između kazne i zlostavljanja i mrcvarenja'". Jutarnji list (in Croatian). Retrieved 19 November 2022.
- ^ Pavelić, Boris (23 September 2021). "Slavljenje zločina: Karlovac imenovao most po postrojbi ratnog zločinca". Al Jazeera Balkans (in Serbo-Croatian). Retrieved 23 May 2022.
- ^ "Specijalci traže da se most na Korani nazove po Gromovima". Novosti (in Serbian). 22 September 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
- ^ Pušić, Mario (22 September 2021). "Odluku izglasali u 3.45h ujutro! Most dobio ime po postrojbi čiji je pripadnik na njemu počinio ratni zločin". Jutarnji list (in Croatian). Retrieved 22 September 2021.
- ^ "Most u Karlovcu nazvan po jedinici čiji je pripadnik na njemu ubio zarobljene rezerviste JNA". Danas (in Serbian). 22 September 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
- ^ N., P. (22 September 2021). "Karlovačko Gradsko vijeće mostu na Korani dalo ime po postrojbi čiji je pripadnik tamo ubio 13 rezervista JNA". Novi list (in Croatian). Retrieved 22 September 2021.
- ^ "Preimenovanje Koranskog mosta podignulo prašinu". Croatian Radiotelevision (in Croatian). 20 September 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
- ^ "Karlovac mayor supports renaming of bridge but not mural in tribute to convict". hr.n1info.com. Hina. 20 September 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2022.