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Rijeka. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Laszlo Szalai.

The county court in the coastal city of Rijeka on Tuesday convicted Dane Radocaj Gajota, Nikola Curuvija, Djordje Kosanovic, Radoslav Korac and Dragan Galovic of physically abusing and killing two Bosniak civilians in the Udbina municipality in the Lika region of Croatia in August 1991.

Radocaj Gajota and Curuvija were sentenced to 15 years in prson, Kosanovic to 12, Korac to 10 and Galovic to six years, while two other men who were accused of the same crime, Damir Radocaj and Dane Radocaj, were acquitted due to lack of evidence.

They five convicted men were convicted in absentia because they are no longer in Croatia.

The court found that their crime was used to intimidate and expel the Bosniak and Croat population from of the Udbina region.

The men arrested Bosniak civilians Ale Vilic and Cazim Vilic, who were cousins, and beat them until Cazim Vilic died.

Then they took Ale Vilic to a pit close to the nearby town of Gospic, where they shot him and buried him along with Cazim Vilic’s body.

Their bodies were recovered in September 1991 and the men were indicted by prosecutors in Krajina in January 1992.

Croatian Serbs started their armed rebellion against the Croatian state in 1991, setting up the Republic of Serbian Krajina, which encompassed around 30 per cent of Croatia’s territory.

It was officially dissolved in November 1995 under the Erdut Peace Agreement signed with the Croatian authorities.