Operation Medak Pocket/Archive 3 - War Crimes Investigations

War Crimes Investigations

The UN immediately began an investigation into the events at Medak. The task was hampered by the systematic destruction that had been carried out by the withdrawing Croatians. The UN forces found that (in the words of an official Canadian study on the incident) "each and every building in the Medak Pocket had been leveled to the ground", in a total of eleven villages and hamlets.

Investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) determined that at least 100 Serb civilians had been unlawfully killed and many others had suffered serious injuries; many of the victims were women and elderly people. 29 executed Serb civilians have been identified, as well as five Serb soldiers who had been captured or wounded. More were thought to have been killed, but the bodies were said to have been removed or destroyed by the Croatians. In addition, Serb-owned property was systematically looted and destroyed to render the area uninhabitable. Personal belongings, household goods, furniture, housing items, farm animals, farm machinery and other equipment were looted or destroyed, and wells were polluted to make them unusable. An estimated 164 homes and 148 barns and outbuildings were burned down or blown up. Much of the destruction was said to have taken place during the 48 hours between the ceasefire being signed and the withdrawal being completed.

The US Department of State claimed that Croatian forces destroyed 11 Serbian villages and killed at least 67 individuals, including civilians.

Several members of the Croatian military were subsequently charged with war crimes. The highest-ranking indictee was General Janko Bobetko. He was indicted for war crimes by the ICTY in 2001, but died before the case was heard by the court, and in consequence the trial was cancelled.

The wider area was under the jurisdiction of the Gospić Military District, commanded at the time by Brigadier Rahim Ademi. He was also indicted by the ICTY and was transferred there in 2001. In 2004, General Mirko Norac – who was already serving a 12-year jail sentence in Croatia for his role in the Gospić massacre – was also indicted and transferred to The Hague. The two cases were joined in July 2004 and in November 2005 the Tribunal agreed to a Croatian government request to transfer the case back to Croatia, for trial before a Croatian court.

The trial of Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi began at the Zagreb County Court in June 2007 and resulted in first-degree verdict in May 2008 whereby Norac was found guilty and given a seven-year sentence for failing to stop his soldiers killing Serbs (28 civilians and 5 prisoners), while Ademi was acquitted. The appeal went to the Supreme Court of Croatia which rendered its verdict in November 2009, confirming the previous verdict but commuting Norac's sentence by a year. The final appeals were rejected in March 2010. The process was tracked for the ICTY Prosecutor by the OSCE Zagreb office.