ZAGREB, 5 June 2022 - A mass and other religious services were held in Macelj on Sunday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the killing of numerous defeated soldiers and civilians by the Communist regime in early June 1945 in that Croatian town near the border with Slovenia.

The War Veterans' Affairs Ministry State Secretary Darko Nekić said in Macelj today that investigations into what happened to victims of the Second World War and to those killed in the aftermath of that war were one of the major tasks of the ministry.

According to some estimates, in Macelj and nearby forests around 13,000 people were killed in early June 1945. With the 1,163 identified victims, including 21 priests, Macelj is so far the biggest site of Communist crimes in Croatia. A score of mass graves have been exhumed at Macelj so far.

Nekić said that the ministry and the Macelj 1945 association were intensively working on shedding the light on those crimes.

The official said that over the last 18 months, nine locations have been searched for remains of the victims, and at one of them, the remains of 84 people have been unearthed.

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ZAGREB, 14 May 2022 - Mass was held on Saturday outside the Church of Croatian Martyrs in Udbina, about 150 kilometres south of Zagreb, to commemorate victims of the Bleiburg tragedy and the Way of the Cross of the Croatian people of 77 years ago.

The event at Udbina was organised by the Bleiburg Victims Commemoration Committee and held under the auspices of the Croatian parliament. Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković and several hundred pilgrims were in attendance.

The events of 77 years ago are embedded in the history of the Croatian people because at the time an endless column of refugees, soldiers and civilians set out for Austria in the hope that they would be granted protection by the Western Allies who handed them over to the Yugoslav Partisans near the Austrian town of Bleiburg, the organisers said.

Đakovo-Osijek Auxiliary Bishop Ivan Ćurić said that many other places of execution, pits, deportations and abductions from towns and villages - when a large number of priests and nuns were taken away - were kept hidden and without a memorial. Since then, new suffering has occurred - the Homeland War in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, said Ćurić.

Patriotism must not be marred by vengefulness

The dignitary said he wished today's memorial day may encourage love and unity in the Croatian people as well as cooperation among nations and cultures and successful ecumenical dialogue so that patriotism is not marred by vengefulness.

The pilgrims at Udbina complied with the Committee's request to display only their parish and national flags, in line with Croatian laws and for the sake of commemorating the Bleiburg tragedy with dignity.

"Today's commemoration is a prayer gathering for the victims, it is by no means a political gathering," the organisers said.

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ZAGREB, 12 April 2022 - Croatian Attorney-General Zlata Hrvoj Šipek met in Zagreb on Tuesday with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT), Serge Brammertz, for talks on cooperation with the MICT and with neighbouring countries regarding war crimes prosecution.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals is mandated to perform a number of essential functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). In carrying out these essential functions the Mechanism maintains the legacies of these two pioneering ad hoc international criminal courts and strives to reflect best practices in the field of international criminal justice.

ZAGREB, 18 Dec, 2021 - On the 30th anniversary of the wartime killing of Croatian civilians in Voćin, a senior delegation of the Serb National Council (SNV) and a special envoy of Serbia's president on Saturday honoured the victims for the first time as well as laying wreaths at a memorial to killed and missing Serbs.

The commemoration was organised by the SNV, which said it was honouring the Croat and Serb residents of Voćin and neighbouring villages, western Slavonia, killed in December 1991.

That month, withdrawing from Croatian soldiers in the Voćin area, Serb paramilitaries killed 47 Voćin villagers and three Croatian defenders.

Speaking at the memorial to the Croatian victims, SNV president Milorad Pupovac said it was one of the worst crimes in the 1991-95 Homeland War that would be remembered for its "bestiality and brutality."

He expressed "strong and deep regret" for the "unprotected" victims who had "no evil thought for anyone," adding, "The people who did this stopped being human and thereby our compatriots."

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's special envoy for cooperation with Croatia regarding the war missing, Veran Matić, said the Voćin crime marked the crimes that would ensue in the following years.

"Even 30 years after those horrible events, I have the feeling that we have lost a lot of time and failed to do a lot that could have been done in dealing with our evil past," he said.

Those gone missing in the war are proof of the fact that we have failed to find a way to successfully deal with our past and to agree on and cooperate in healing our societies, he added.

"Some of the people who inspired this crime still have a platform for hate speech and they use it unimpeded. Our task is to stop such rhetoric and not to allow such speech so that the victims, their families and our societies can rest, and as a guarantee that crimes will not happen again."

Matić also said Serbia and Croatia should continue to look for the disappeared even though 30 years have gone by.

Pupovac, Matić and local officials also commemorated Serb civilians from western Slavonia killed between 1991 and 1995.

"We are here today to reiterate our commitment to cooperation in shedding light on the fate of the missing, both those gone missing in this area 30 years ago and those gone missing in later years in other parts of Croatia," said Pupovac.

He added that "cooperation in the search for the missing leads us from hostility to partnership, from nurturing feelings of war to developing feelings of peace."

Responding to questions from the press, Pupovac said this year's commemoration in Voćin was a step forward as both Serb and Croatian victims were honoured.

Asked why no one from Croatia's state leadership was present, he said it was not the time to reprimand anyone, other than those responsible for the crime.

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ZAGREB, 28 Nov, 2021 - The Democratic Union of Hungarians of Croatia on Sunday held a commemoration in Dalj Planina in tribute to 20 ethnic Hungarian civilians killed by Serb paramilitaries in November and December 1991 during the occupation of that Slavonian village.

The civilians were killed by Serb paramilitaries led by Željko Ražnatović Arkan from the then Territorial Defence Training Centre in Erdut.

Hungarian minority MP Robert Jankovics said the crimes committed in Dalj Planina had characteristics of genocide because entire families were killed there.

Asked about the perpetrators of the atrocity, Jankovics said that in June 2020 the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted Serbian security service members Franko Simatović and Jovica Stanišić for the crime.

As far as I know, also indicted were Slobodan Milošević, Željko Ražnatović Arkan and Goran Hadžić but, unfortunately, they died before the verdict was delivered, Jankovics said.

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ZAGREB, 18 Sept, 2021 - Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava said after a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar on Saturday that the incumbent and all previous Croatian governments should be ashamed of the fact that nobody had answered for the city's destruction in 1991 and the thousands of people killed there.

"If we disregard the rulings of the international tribunal in The Hague and for the Ovčara atrocity, nobody has yet been brought to account for Vukovar and that is a big disgrace for this government and all previous governments," said Penava.

Asked by reporters if today was an appropriate day to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar, Penava said that everyone would have their own opinion on the matter but that he welcomed it as a day honouring Vukovar's defenders and the 204th Brigade.

He said that he had listened to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's speech today, in which, he said, Plenković spoke about positive examples of the government's care for Vukovar but failed to mention problems, such as those regarding the local economy and suspended investments in the local wood-processing sector and hotel industry, which, he said, the government led by Plenković was responsible for.

"What saddens one the most, and what the government led by Plenković has inherited from the previous governments, is the shameful fact that nobody has been brought to account for the fact that Vukovar was razed to the ground in 1991, while the parliamentary majority regularly votes confidence in both the Supreme Court and the Chief State Prosecutor, thus supporting the policy that has turned its back on the Vukovar victims," said Penava.

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ZAGREB, 11 July, 2021 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković says in his message on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the Srebrenica tragedy that the insane atrocities committed in Srebrenica amounted to the defeat of humanity and that Croatians are in their thoughts with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On Sunday Plenković wrote on his Twitter account that today "the tribute is being paid to thousands of innocent Bosniak victims who will never be forgotten."

The killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak civilians, men and boys in Srebrenica 26 years ago when that eastern Bosnian enclave fell into the hands of the Serb force was described by the Croatian Prime Minister as "insane crime " which amounted to the defeat of humanity.

During this year's commemorative events, remains of 19 Srebrenica victims will be buried in the Potočari memorial centre. The youngest victims unearthed from mass graves are Azmir Osmanovć, who was a 16-year-old boy when he was killed, and 17-year-old Fikret Kiverić.  Also the remains of 24-year-old girl will be buried today.

So far, the funeral rites have been organised at the Potočari centre for 6,652 victims who were exhumed after the war from mass graves or from unmarked individual graves.

The families of another 237 victims buried their dearest ones in other cemeteries after the identification of the remains.

Also, the remains of 88 victims not yet identified are in the ossuary in Tuzla. In several cases, the agreement has not been obtained from families for burials as long as only parts of the bodies of their dearest ones are exhumed and identified. Those families wait for the discovery of the all the remains of those victims.

Since early Sunday morning, hundreds of mourners started flocking Srebrenica and Potočari.

To date, 48 sentenced for Srebrenica genocide to a total of over 700 years

International courts and local courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia have to date sentenced 48 wartime officials and military and police officers of Bosnia Serb to a total of more than 700 years

Five high-profile convicts have been given life sentences for genocide and crimes against humanity committed in July 1995 in Srebrenica. The wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were tried for charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Srebrenica, Prijedor, Ključ, and other districts of Bosnia, and these two masterminds of the Srebrenica tragedy have been sentenced to life in prison by the UN tribunal ICTY.

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ZAGREB, 8 June, 2021 - Wartime Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladić was on Tuesday given a final verdict of life in prison for war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The information was conveyed to reporters in The Hague by Murat Tahirović, president of the BiH Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses.

Tahirović was able to follow the announcement of the verdict in real time while reporters and most of the other audience followed it with a delay and without access to the courtroom.

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ZAGREB, 29 May 2021 - Croatian President Zoran Milanović has invalidated former President Ivo Josipović's decision on stripping wartime Osijek official, general Branimir Glavaš, of war medals, since Glavaš's convictions were quashed and the retrials were ordered.

Glavaš's son, lawyer Filip Glavaš, told Hina on Saturday, that the return of the seven war medals to his father were the only logical and fair decision as his father had no longer the status of a convict.

Milanović's decision on declaring null and void Josipović's decision was published in the Official Gazette after it had been adopted on 21 May on the advice of the state commission for decorations and awards and in line with the Constitution and the relevant legislation.

The commission took into consideration the changes in the trials in the cases dubbed 'Garage' and 'Duct tape' for the war crimes against local Serbs in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek in the early 1990s.

Lawyer Filip Glavaš said today that the reasons such as the final convictions for stripping his father of war decorations had not existed for some time and that in 2019, they had asked the then president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović to return the decoration to his father.

However, she ignored our request, the lawyer Filip Glavaš told Hina.

 A month ago we sent the request to this effect to  President Zoran Milanović, and he granted our request, which is the only fair and logical decision considering the fact that the Constitutional and Supreme Courts quashed the convictions, he said.

The Supreme Court quashed the trial court verdict on 28 July 2016 and requested the Zagreb County Court to hold a new trial in this case.

In the initial trial which lasted from October 2007 to April 2009, Glavaš and the other accused were sentenced to lengthy prison terms but the final verdict was quashed by the Supreme Court. By that time Glavas had served most of his eight-year term in prisons in Bosnia and Herzegovina where he fled before the announcement of the trial court verdict.

In late November 2019, Glavaš, who was still standing trial for war crimes, supported in Osijek with his signature Milanović's presidential candidacy, saying that his signature "is not a signature for the SDP or for drawing closer to the SDP but for Milanović as a candidate for the president of the republic", while members of his HDSSB party would decide for themselves whose presidential bid to support.

Later that day, Milanović, who was  the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate for the Croatian president,  said that he distanced himself from the support expressed for his presidential bid by member of parliament and HDSSB party leader Branimir Glavaš.

"I would like to distance myself from his support because Glavaš is not my kind of people. I think that (his support) is a message to (PM Andrej) Plenković. The man has been indicted for grave war crimes and the court is expected to make a ruling. The biggest problem about it is that the trial is taking too long, considering that the events in question happened in Osijek in 1991. That is something that I, as the future president, will change if I can, by statements and by exerting pressure at least. The case is still under way and that's not how the judiciary should work," Milanović said then during his presidential campaign.

ZAGREB, 19 March, 2021 - A 50-year-old man has been taken into custody following an extensive operation by the police, state attorney and the security-intelligence agency (SOA) on the suspicion of torturing and killing seven Vukovar civilians during the Homeland War in September 1991.

The suspect and members of his paramilitary unit are believed to have punched, kicked and hit with their rifle butts a group of seven civilians, aged between 24 and 55, whom they found in the basement of a house in Vukovar.

The perpetrators then led the captured civilians to the city centre, killing six on the way, while a 55-year-old prisoner was wounded.

After that, the suspect and the other paramilitaries returned to the house and collected the women and children staying there whom they also wanted to take to the city centre but were stopped by an unidentified Serb army officer. The women and children and the wounded 55-year-old man were returned to the basement, however, the next day the 55-year-old was killed by an unidentified Serb paramilitary.

The police reported that after the reintegration of the Danube region an exhumation was conducted and six of the murdered civilians were identified. A 27-year-old man from that group is still unaccounted for.

The suspect was taken into custody while the Osijek County Attorney's office has filed criminal charges against him for war crimes against civilians.

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