Dragoljub Vracaric repeated his testimony in 2006 in a civil lawsuit filed by the family of the murdered Ana Lukic, a Croat married to a Serb, against the Republic of Croatia.

In 1992, Cibaric also confessed to Lukic’s murder and revealed the exact location of the crime. Her body was found about 30 metres from Milica Vracaric. According to his testimony, the main motive for the killing were Yugoslav military records that included her husband and sons, which were found with Lukic during a search at the shelter. Lukic’s work colleague Olga Gedosevic testified at the trial in 2006 and said that she saw Cibaric take Lukic out of the shelter.

Lukic’s husband, Bogdan Lukic, who knew Cibaric from pre-war Borovo Naselje, remembers asking him in 1992 in a Belgrade courtroom why he killed his wife. “He said he didn’t know she was my wife. Then he said he had to kill her because he was ordered to do so. He noted they would have killed him otherwise,” Bogdan Lukic told BIRN.

Cibaric told BIRN that he did not remember the conversation and that he had nothing to do with the murder of Ana Lukic.

The basis for the 2006 lawsuit was a legal provision under which victims’ families could claim compensation from the Republic of Croatia if the perpetrators were members of the Croatian Army. But Lukic’s family lost the case on the grounds that the deadline for seeking financial compensation had passed. Although the trial did not address the guilt or innocence of the immediate perpetrator, the court stated that it believed the testimonies of Dragoljub Vracaric and Olga Gedosevic, in which Cibaric was named.

Asked why they did not file criminal charges against the perpetrators before filing a lawsuit against Croatia, Bogdan Lukic said that their lawyers felt that they could win the proceedings without the conviction of the immediate perpetrator. The second reason was the fact that Dragoljub Vracaric did not want to participate in filing a criminal complaint.

“He was afraid that something would happen to him as a Serb in Croatia. Himself and other family members. I remember that around 1999, I suggested that we file an application together, but he did not want to. He wanted to live in peace for the remainder of his life,” Lukic recalled.

Dragoljub Vracaric’s son Zivojin gave a similar answer: “After the war, my father lived in [Croat-majority] Vukovar and did not want any problems. We didn’t talk much about it, but he told me that Cibaric killed my mum. He just asked me to promise him that I would not do anything while he was alive,” Zivojin Vracaric, who found and buried his mother’s body seven days after her murder, told BIRN.

Dragoljub Vracaric died in 2008. Two years afterwards, representatives of the political leadership of Croatia and Serbia were told the story of how Milica Vracaric was killed.

Zivojin Vracaric was among a group of relatives of civilian victims of the war who met Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and Croatian and Serbian presidents Ivo Josipovic and Boris Tadic and their advisers in 2010. It was the two countries’ most serious initiative since the end of the war to exchange information on killed and missing persons from both sides and the potential perpetrators of these crimes.

“When it came to my turn to speak, I told them that my story was the simplest,” Vracaric said. “I told them that, unlike the other victims’ representatives’ statements, the perpetrator was known in this case. Then I told them Cibaric’s name,” said Zivojin, who spoke at least three times in similar meetings with Croatian officials about the murder of his mother.

“President Ivo Josipovic invited me and few other family members of victims to his office for a meeting. I handed him my father’s testimony and said that I hoped he would do something,” he added.

Former President Josipovic told BIRN that he does not remember individual cases because of the amount of time that has passed: “If Mr Vracaric gave specific information about the crime during our meeting, which I have no reason to doubt, then the note was routinely sent to the State Attorney’s Office. Likewise, if anyone has provided any evidence, they have also been forwarded to the State Attorney,” Josipovic said.

In similar meetings over the last five years, Bogdan Lukic has also spoken twice with Croatian government officials in charge of missing persons. Last time, in 2018, he also named Cibaric.

“The Croatian government official only replied that Serbs killed his parents in Vukovar too,” Lukic said, adding that nothing happened after that.

In 2011, Cibaric’s name was included on a Serbian list of Croatian nationals suspected of war crimes for whom Belgrade had issued an arrest warrant. Croatia has refused to cooperate.

“A Croatian soldier never killed civilians and helpless old men and women. We even assisted enemy soldiers who were wounded,” Cibaric insisted in a statement he showed to reporters in 2011, after the announcement of the Serbian investigation. Three years ago, Serbia then informed Croatia that it was investigating 44 Croatian nationals, Cibaric among them.

Cibaric told BIRN that in 2016 he had a talk with “Belgrade investigators” in the city of Osijek, but that no one has contacted him since then.

The Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office did not answer BIRN’s question about whether Cibaric is being investigated, on the grounds that such information is secret.

BIRN asked the Croatian State Attorney’s Office via email on October 18 this year if there has ever been an investigation into Cibaric in Croatia. BIRN also asked whether Croatia was investigating war crimes against Milica Vracaric and Ana Lukic.

There has been no response to either question so far.

This article was produced as part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice grant scheme, supported by the European Commission.