26
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
The organization has also asked to be informed about
the reasons of Tomica Bajši
’s subsequent transfer
from the Dubrava Hospital back to the Zagreb Prison
Hospital and whether he continues to receive
neurological investigation and care.
Refugee returns
Returns of Croatian Serbs continued, although in June
the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in
Europe (OSCE), the largest international organization
still present in the country, stated that of the 300,000
Croatian Serbs who fled or were displaced within
Croatia as a result of the armed conflict only some
80,000 had been registered as returned. Major
problems persisted in the repossession of private
property, which has been inadequately regulated by
the 1998 Return Programme which apparently
violates several Constitutional provisions. The return
of socially-owned flats to their pre-war owners
remained unresolved, even though both the OSCE and
the Council of Europe have urged the authorities to
provide a comprehensive solution to this issue which
obstructs the return of Croatian Serbs in particular.
The Croatian Ombudsman, in a report issued in April,
recommended that this Programme is abolished and
that Parliament adopt a law establishing a
comprehensive
legislative
and
administrative
framework for property repossession. However, no
such legislation had been introduced to Parliament by
the end of June.
At the end of May, some violent incidents were
reported in southern Croatia in which Serb returnees
were targeted. On 29 May the house of a Serb returnee
in Benkovac was set on fire, an attack which
reportedly followed several other incidents of
harassment. On 31 May a large number of bullets were
fired at a house in the village of Kakma near
Benkovac, which belonged to a Serb returnee. He is
also the head of the local Serb Democratic Forum and
works for the Jesuit committee for refugees, which
provides humanitarian aid for returnees. On 5 June a
Serb man living near the town of Sinj was attacked by
a local retired police officer, and had to be hospitalized
as a result. Investigations were reportedly opened into
all incidents.
Criminal
prosecutions
for
human
rights
violations committed during the armed conflict
On 7 February an arrest warrant was issued by the
Rijeka County Court against retired Croatian Army
General Mirko Norac. He was suspected of having
ordered and participated in the mass executions of
Serb civilians in the town of Gospi
at the beginning
of armed conflict in Croatia in 1991. Three days later
massive protests were organized in several Croatian
towns. In Split, the crowd was estimated at over
100,000 people - many of whom had come from
neighbouring
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The
crowd
included local politicians and government officials
who reportedly openly criticized the arrest warrant
and the impeding trial proceedings, implying that this
was an attack on the legality of the Croatian state.
Mirko Norac was subsequently arrested at the end of
February and charged with war crimes against the
civilian population in March. At the end of June, trial
proceedings opened against him and four other
Croatian Army and police officers before the Rijeka
County Court.
Renewed trial proceedings for war crimes
continued before the Karlovac County Court against
former Croatian police officer Mihajlo Hrastov. He
stands accused of the murder of 13 reservists and
officers of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in
September 1991 in that town. The JNA soldiers had
reportedly surrendered and laid down their arms
before they were shot or otherwise killed by members
of a special unit of the local police forces. He had
already been tried and acquitted of the killings in
September 1992, when the court found that he had
acted in self-defence. In 1993 the Supreme Court
quashed this verdict and ordered a retrial. So far only
two hearings have taken place in the retrial which
opened in May 2000.
In March the Croatian Constitutional Court issued
a ruling that trial proceedings should be renewed in
the case of the murder of Josip Reihl-Kir, the police
commander in Osijek, who was shot dead on the eve
of the armed conflict in July 1991. He had been a
driving force behind negotiations between the Croat
and Serb communities in that part of eastern Slavonia
and was killed while travelling by car with three other
local officials, two of whom were also killed when
automatic gunfire was opened on them. The primary
suspect for the killing, a Croatian reserve police
officer, was allowed to leave the country shortly
afterwards, though an investigation against him was
ongoing. He was convicted in absentia of the killings
in 1994 and, when he returned to the country in 1996
criminal proceedings against him were renewed.
However these proceedings were halted in 1997 when
the presiding judge in the case requested that the
Supreme Court apply the 1996 Amnesty Law to the
accused. He was subsequently amnestied and in
response a lawyer representing Josip Reihl-Kir’s
widow filed a constitutional complaint asking the
Constitutional Court to order a retrial, which was
finally granted in March 2001.
Trials for war crimes continued against many
Croatian Serbs, some of which were conducted in
absentia. Though several of these appeared to be
conducted in accordance with internationally-
recognized standards for fairness, there was concern
that some of the charges were poorly and arbitrarily
formulated and that arrests of some accused might be
politically motivated.
One such case was the arrest and detention of
Nataša Jankovi
in January, on the basis of her in
absentia conviction for war crimes in 1996. In
February 2001 a request for retrial was granted and her
case was sent back for renewed investigation. In the
course of this investigation it became clear that the
prosecution had insufficient evidence against Nataša
Jankovi
. Witnesses who had testified previously
altered their statements saying that they were not sure
they had ever heard of her or seen her at the scene of