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The Grubori suspects in court. Photo: Beta.

“It is indisputable that six elderly people were killed in the village of Grubori and that these killings were committed by members of the Lucko anti-terrorist unit, but everything else is disputable.”

With these words, Zagreb county court judge Zdravko Majerovic last week acquitted two former members of Croatia’s Lucko special police unit, Franjo Drljo and Bozo Krajina of what he called a “brutal crime” that “disgraced the Croatian state”.

The trial for the killings in Grubori which happened after the Croatian military’s Operation Storm in August 1995, which seized back the area around Knin – which had been the centre of the Croatian Serb rebellion in 1991 – took two and a half years.

The elderly Serbs were killed during a “cleansing of the terrain” on August 25, 1995, one day before a ‘Freedom Train’ carrying President Franjo Tudjman and the entire national leadership was to celebrate victory in the war by passing through the ‘liberated area’ on the Zagreb-Split railroad.

Members of the Lucko anti-terrorist unit, an elite Croatian police cell, had the task of searching the area and securing the route. On the first day of two-day “cleansing action”, five people were killed in Grubori , including an 80-year-old man and a 90-year-old woman. Another person was killed later.

First in the group of police officers who entered Grubori was Franjo Drljo. He was charged with directly committing crimes against six civilians, and not doing anything to prevent his subordinates from killing civilians and burning their homes. Bozo Krajina was charged with command responsibility.

Judge Majerovic, however, did not see evidence that would link Drljo and Krajina with these crimes. Human rights activist Zoran Pusic, whose NGO closely monitored the trial, said that if Drljo and Krajina were not guilty, a new indictment against those who were responsible should be filed. Zagreb based NGO Documenta, which is also engaged in monitoring war crimes, said the verdict was “surprising”.

The guilty stay free

In November 2012, when the Hague Tribunal acquitted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac of crimes committed during Operation Storm, Croatia’s highest officials, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and President Ivo Josipovic, said that the authorities should investigate and find those who were truly responsible.

According to data from the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Croatia, whose activists were on the ground just after the operation, there were 677 civilian victims in the Knin area and around 20,000 houses were burned or destroyed.

The state prosecution does not deny that crimes were committed during Operation Storm, but their figures are significantly less than those of the Helsinki Committee. Prosecutors insist that only 214 people died during Operation Storm and its aftermath: 167 deaths were qualified as war crimes, while 47 were designated as murders.

What is crushing is that 19 years after these 24 war crimes with their 155 victims, according to the state prosecution figures, the perpetrators remain unconvicted.

A year and a half after the acquittal of the Croatian generals in The Hague, , and despite announcements from the top that the prosecution will intensify the investigation of crimes committed during Operation Storm, there have been no new indictments.

Bearing in mind that almost 20 years have passed since the crimes were committed, it is hard to believe that it is possible to find evidence and witnesses who would point a finger at the real culprits.

The Operation Storm commemoration. Photo: Beta.

A tainted anniversary

The Operation Storm crimes cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the military action that Croatia used to liberate the area. Every year when it is celebrated on August 5, which has been designated Victory Day and Homeland Thanksgiving Day, there are warnings from Serbia, as well as from part of the Croatian public, that this public holiday is tainted by unpunished crimes.

The highest Croatian officials speak of this in their speeches at the commemoration of the military action’s anniversary, but in practice, nothing is being done to find and punish those responsible.

Although the acquittal of the two former members of the special unit is being appealed at the supreme court, the trial itself showed how hard is for a judge to deliver a convicting verdict.

Witnesses changed their statements during the investigation and most of them, when they came to the court, did not remember anything, or had no knowledge of any crimes. None of them could not remember who commanded the action and who their superiors were.

The fact is that the most of the investigations and the war crimes trials of former members of Croatian forces were conducted under pressure from the international community, especially during the negotiations that led Zagreb to membership of the European Union.

That time has passed however, since Croatia became a member of the EU last year. There is no more pressure from Europe, and there is no desire at home to find the perpetrators of the killings of several hundred civilians.

If the supreme court upholds the acquittal of the anti-terrorist policemen for the the Grubori killings and no other indictments are filed, Croatia will be permanently marked as a country that tolerates such crimes. That means it will be difficult to point a finger at other states in the region for failing to deal with their own wartime misdeeds.

Fine words about the need for individual guilt in order to wash away the shame of the state and its people will remain empty stories, and vows to punish the guilty as a key condition for reconciliation will be no more than attempts to perpetuate an illusion.