Court Told Croatia Aimed to Protect Serb Property

A justice of the constitutional court of Croatia said at the trial of former Croat generals at the Hague tribunal this week that the Croatian government had sought to protect abandoned Serb property after Operation Storm in 1995.



Snjezana Bagic, a defence witness in the trial of former Croatian police chief Mladen Markac, is one of the authors of the law on temporary expropriation of property abandoned during and after Operation Storm. She said that the law was aimed not at preventing Serbs from returning to their pre-war homes, but at protecting their abandoned property.



“Our task was to find an acceptable legal [framework] in which the abandoned property could be protected and temporarily used,” Bagic said.



Markac is accused, along with generals Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak, of participating in a joint criminal enterprise to drive the ethnic Serb population from the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995.



During Operation Storm in August 1995, Croatian forces recaptured Krajina, which had been held by rebel Serbs since 1991.



According to the indictment, Gotovina was the overall operational commander of the offensive in the southern portion of the region, while Markac was in charge of special police units, and Cermak headed the Knin garrison.



The prosecutors say that one of the elements demonstrating the existence of a joint criminal enterprise is the intent by the Croatian authorities to prevent the return of Serb refugees following Operation Storm, and they say this is reflected in the law on temporary expropriation of property.



On December 5, 2006, the three accused, Gotovina, Cermak and Markac, all pleaded not guilty. The trial began on March 11, 2008.



At the beginning of her testimony, Bagic told the court that she had taken part in the creation of the law on temporary expropriation of property as the "then secretary of the ministry of justice, alongside a team of legal experts formed by the Croatian government".



The witness said, “The law was not designed to prevent the return of Serbs, but rather to protect their property from plunderers and arsonists.



“The legislators’ intent was to grant temporary use of the abandoned property to Croat returnees and refugees from Bosnia and Hercegovina.”



The witness said temporary users had to take care of the property and keep it as their own, but they could not dispose of it in any way.



Bagic said that, on August 31, 1995, Serbs were given 30 days to return to Croatia and apply for the return of their property, and that deadline was extended at the end of September to 90 days.



Asked by a defence lawyer for Markac, Goran Mikulicic, why the deadline was extended, the witness said, “It was considered unrealistic that an owner would be able to return and reclaim his property within 30 days, as there were difficulties because of the refugee influx. Often, the refugees could not be reached, their new addresses were unknown. It seemed therefore realistic to extend this deadline to 90 days.



"On January 23, 1996, that deadline had elapsed, and the issue of return was later resolved in the inter-state agreement on the normalisation of relations between Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."



In cross-examination, prosecutor Katrina Gustafson suggested that the Croatian authorities were intending to undertake steps to prevent Serb refugees from returning to the Krajina area and trying to permanently settle their homes with Croats.



The witness, however, said that the "aim was to have the Serbs return to their homes as soon as possible". That was why the order had set deadlines - 30, and subsequently 90 days - within which the refugees were to reclaim their properties.



After Gustafson said that in certain cases Serb refugees had to wait up to six years to return to their homes, the witness said, “The system was designed in order to allow for return as quickly as possible, but there were situations in which it may have not been effective.”



The trial continues next week.



Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.