Glavas Trial Enters Closing Phase

The war crimes trial of Croatian politician Branimir Glavas, former military commander Ivica Krnjak, and four other accused, resumed at the Zagreb County Court this week after doctors dismissed Krnjak’s request for an adjournment on health grounds.



Prosecutors accuse the six of being former members of military unit the Uskocka Satnija company, and have charged them with war crimes against ethnic Serb civilians in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.



The indictment against them contains charges related to the so-called “Garage” case, in which victims were tortured and killed in the garage of an Osijek municipal building, and the “Duct Tape” case, in which eight men were gagged with tape and shot by the Drava river.



The trial, which began 18 months ago, was initially due to enter its final phase on April 20 with the closing arguments for the defence.



But the hearing was postponed after Krnjak’s lawyers said he had to go into hospital and have surgery on clogged veins in his throat. Attorney Domagoj Resetar justified his client's failure to appear in court by presenting a medical document showing Krnjak had been hospitalised in Osijek.



However, it transpired that presiding judge Zeljko Horvatovic called the hospital and was told that Krnjak was not there, and so ordered his detention and transfer to the hospital of Zagreb prison.



“Since it is necessary to establish Krnjak's [state of] health on the day of each hearing, the only possible way to do it is while he is in detention,” said the judge, adding that the court felt Krnjak was trying to stall and delay the proceedings after the prosecution presented its closing arguments last week. Krnjak has already asked for health checks six times this year.



A team of doctors who examined him on April 22 told the court that in their opinion “there is no need for hospitalisation and surgery”, prompting the panel of judges hearing the case to schedule the resumption of the trial over the protests of the defence team.



Krnjak’s lawyer Resetar said that continuing with the case was “a violation of Krnjak's human rights and constitutional right to health care”.



Meanwhile, Krnjak's wife filed a request at the court for the judges hearing the case to be dismissed, accusing them of negligence, abuse of office and failure to provide assistance.

Her request was dismissed immediately, with the explanation that she was not a party in the proceedings and was therefore not entitled to make any such request.



The proceedings have already been halted several times, mainly because of the resistance of the main accused, Glavas, a powerful parliamentary deputy from the Slavonia region.



As it advances towards European Union membership, and despite mixed feelings from the press and public, Croatia has made efforts to come to terms with war crimes committed by its own citizens against ethnic Serbs, who have been traditionally viewed in the country as the villains of the 1991-95 war.



Glavas, known for his fiery nationalist rhetoric during the conflict, is the highest-ranking official to have been indicted for war crimes. One of the founders of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, he was expelled in 2005 after clashing with party leader and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader over Sanader’s pro-European policies.



When the investigations of the cases in the indictment first started, Glavas denied all wrongdoing, saying they were politically motivated and orchestrated by his rivals.



He went on a 37-day hunger-strike in protest, and, in early December 2006, was released from custody. The investigating judge ruled he was too ill to attend hearings, and the case was suspended until February 2007.



In April 2007, Glavas was formally indicted by an Osijek court on charges of war crimes against Serbs, and returned to custody, where he started a second hunger strike. An additional indictment was issued against him a month later.



His trial began in October that year, but was this was interrupted following his re-election to the Croatian parliament in the November 2007 general election, which gave him immunity from detention.



In July 2008, the trial was adjourned until September because of the poor health of Krnjak and another accused, Gordana Getos Magdic. Under Croatian law, when there has been a break of more than two months in proceedings, a re-trial is mandatory.



In their seven-hour closing statement last week, the prosecution demanded guilty verdicts for all accused for war crimes against civilians, and for prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years, saying it had proved they were guilty of “systematically planned and organised crimes”.



Prosecutors Jasmina Dolmagic and Miroslav Kraljevic said they managed to prove that the accused were guilty despite the passage of time and lack of physical evidence, for which they criticised “the relevant institutions that did not do their job”.



They argued that the presentation of evidence was also hampered by pressure exerted on witnesses.



“Many witnesses from Osijek tried not to antagonise the first defendant Glavas,” said Dolmagic.



Prosecutors said that both “systematically planned and organised crimes” were committed by the same group of people, not just out of revenge, but also for purposes of intimidation.



Dolmagic said that in the Garage case, Glavas was guilty because as head of the National Defense Secretariat and de-facto commander of a military unit he was aware that civilians were arrested and tortured, yet rather than acting to prevent the atrocities and punish those responsible, he tried to cover up the crimes.



In the Duct Tape case, prosecutors said they proved that Glavas and Krnjak ordered the accused members of the unit, Dino Kontic, Tihomir Valentic and Zdravko Dragic, to arrest, torture and execute eight Serb civilians on the bank of the River Drava. The orders were issued via defendant Magdic, they say.



They added that all the victims were Serb civilians who were arrested by three uniformed men and brought to a house in Osijek's Dubrovacka Street where they were tortured. They were all tied up in the same way with duct tape and executed on the same spot by the Drava with one bullet to the head, prosecutors say.



Kraljevic says that the indictment in the Duct Tape case was based on statements previously made by Magdic and Dragic to the Osijek police, in which they admitted their involvement in the abduction of civilians. Dragic admitted that he had attempted to kill Radoslav Ratkovic, the only person to have survived the executions by the Drava.



Although the two accused later withdrew their statements during the trial, saying they had been pressured into making them by the police, Kraljevic noted that both the Supreme Court and the trial chamber in the case found that their original statements were not made under coercion.



Dolmagic said that the victims in both cases were civilians who were in no way connected with hostile actions against Croatia by its Serb minority, which set up a rebel state in the Krajina region.



“They were civilians who didn't want to leave their city, and who shared the destiny of their fellow citizens,” Dolmagic said.



Responding in his closing argument on April 22, the defence lawyer of Branimir Glavas, Drazen Matijevic, asked for his client’s acquittal, saying that Croatia was “the only country trying those who had liberated it”, and repeated his client’s accusation that the charges were politically motivated.



The defence teams of each accused called for the aquittal of their respective client.



After the closing words of all defence teams, the court is expected to start deliberations on the verdict.



Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained reporter based in Zagreb.