Posted on 05/09/2009 9:49:11 AM PDT by Ravnagora
A far-right Croat MP has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for war crimes against Serb civilians during Croatia's war of independence in the early 1990s.
A court in Zagreb found Branimir Glavas had given orders to a paramilitary unit under his command to murder six Serbs in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.
The former general was charged last year after the Croatian parliament partially lifted his legal immunity.
Glavas denies any wrongdoing and says his trial was politically motivated.
He blames the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), from which he was expelled in 2006 after clashing with Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.
Immunity
During the trial, prosecutors accused Glavas, 51, of ordering members of a paramilitary unit to abduct, torture and murder six Serbs in Osijek in late 1991, when he was in command of the city's defence forces.
The civilians were taken to the banks of the Drava river with their mouths taped and hands and feet tied, then shot and dumped into the water, they said.
Some 20,000 people are believed to have been killed in the war in Croatia
Glavas was also accused of failing to prevent the killings of two other Serbs, one of whom was forced to drink battery acid before being shot dead.
Five former members of the Osijek paramilitary unit were also found guilty of war crimes on Friday and sentenced to between five and seven years in prison.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Next in line: Wesley Clark?
This is nuts. It just shows that war in Balkans was nothing less than a business decision by EU and USA. Ordinary people are the ones who usually pay the price.
Oh, yeah! Soros, Europe and the US wanted Yugoslavia broken up at all costs, for political and economic reasons. Most ordinary people were just caught in the middle.
I have a cousin who fought in the Yugoslav Army in Croatia and who lives here in the US now. When I tried to talk to him about the politics of it, he said, "It's easy to talk about the political merits of this and that from where you sit. But when someone is shooting at you, you shoot back. And when the guy sleeping next to you just might turn and kill you too, because he decided that night that he no longer wanted to be a Yugoslav, but rather now he wants to be something else, you can't even sleep. The last thing on your mind is whether or not the US loves you or hates you!"
In February of this year, the Police Minister of Croatia's wartime President (Tudjman), admitted that Croatia started the war by killing Serb civilians. But the Western press was completely silent about it.
I don’t know the first thing about this guys case. But a 2 small observations. First, he blew it, he should have come out AGGRESSIVELY for global warming and Kyoto. Hell, he should have wrote a book about it! They would have never touched him. I firmly belive this.
Next, does this *ever* happen to a leftist/socialist? They have been in Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Angola, Somalia, Ethiopi, Yemen, China, and countless other places of oppression.
Why is it never anyone associated with the modern left?
I stayed and taught in Osiek/Erdut for about a month in 1998. The Croats did a number on the Serb villages and people there. I personally believe it was a war crime, but there were five separate elements fighting in the wars. It is a very complicated story with roots back at least as far as World War II. We should stay out of it and let the local authorities sort it out.
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