A Tortured Trial (of unbelievably brutal and cruel Croats)

The notorious Lora case is back in court, with Croatia's ability to try its own accused war criminals as an additional suspect.

SPLIT, Croatia | Eight military policemen are again on trial here in an important test for Croatia’s justice system.

The men's retrial on war crimes charges began September 12 at the Split county court. The defendants are accused of torturing and murdering ethnic Serb civilians at the Lora military prison in 1992.

Only four of the accused appeared in court. The others went into hiding after their acquittal in a first trial in late 2002 was overturned by the Supreme Court last September.

The current retrial is taking place under the same indictment but with new judges; the state attorney’s office has said that another indictment will also be brought against five of the accused for war crimes against prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

During the 1991-1995 war in newly-independent Croatia, a former Yugoslav Army (JNA) base in Split was transformed into a prison camp by the Croatian army in which dozens of Yugoslav soldiers and ethnic Serbian civilians from Split and surrounding areas were savagely tortured. Several prisoners died.

The crimes occurred in the middle of Croatia’s second largest city and soon became an open secret. In April 1992, military policemen Milorad Paic and Mario Barisic, who is now a key witness in the case, were sent to prepare the prison ahead of a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They said they found prisoners “lying in blood on the floor, unable to get up, some of them without eyes, ears, or tongues.” They saw “walls covered in blood and a military field telephone with wires sticking out, also covered in blood.”

The nine prisoners Barisic and Paic saw were Montenegrin JNA soldiers who were subsequently removed from the prison at the order of then-defense minister Gojko Susak before the ICRC visit, without being registered.

Barisic and Paic reported their findings to their commanders, and then-president Franjo Tudjman was also informed.

Nothing was done to stop the torture, and Barisic soon concluded that the issue was systematically covered up on orders from the top.

Despite thorough media coverage and the publication of testimonies from survivors, who also gave statements to prosecutors, it took almost 10 years for the matter to be tried in court. But the first trial was a highly politicized affair. Most of the prosecution witnesses had already left the country and few were summoned. The presiding judge, Slavko Lozina, immediately released the accused; two of them fled, while one never bothered to show up in the first place. The authorities failed to provide witness protection and released false information, claiming some witnesses were themselves war crimes suspects. The result was that most witnesses were too intimidated to come to court.

Judge Lozina did his best to let the public know what the official view on the case was and showed contempt for the accusations.

During the first session, Lozina congratulated the Croatian national soccer team on a victory and allowed the audience, many of them members of extreme nationalist organizations, to applaud loudly. He adjusted the trial schedule so as not to overlap with soccer games and allowed audience members to shout at witnesses. He loudly argued with one witness; another was attacked in the courtroom building.

The case of Djordje Katic is indicative of the court's attitude in the first trial.

Photographs of his beaten body had often been published in the newspapers. But even though his location in Australia was well known, Lozina claimed he didn’t know where to find him and Katic never received an invitation to testify. Katic spoke to police immediately after his release from Lora, and there is also a detailed medical report showing he was seriously injured. Lozina, however, did not admit any of these documents in court.

Katic, who repeatedly indicated he was willing to testify, believes the civilians were tortured “as a part of a plan.” There was a list of Serbs living in Split, he said, who were kicked out of their apartments so Croatian soldiers could take them over.

Two years before the start of the first trial, the media also made public the testimonies of three other survivors. One man, who personally handed his written statement to UN human rights envoy Tadeusz Mazowiecki, testified that he was held at Lora for 10 days after being forced to sign a blank piece of paper.

He was then constantly beaten by a dozen soldiers, treated with electroshocks from a military field telephone, and sprayed with cold water. His torturers also broke his eardrum and kneecaps while “testing his reflexes.”

Prisoners were also sexually abused, forced to cover each other with feces, and to injure each other in different ways. They were rarely given food or water.

After a few weeks, they would be exchanged as prisoners of war or just dumped somewhere outside the prison, though most of them were not able to walk.

The trial ended after five months in November 2002 with the acquittal of all the accused. It quickly became notorious as a miscarriage of justice. Lozina's behavior on the bench was never officially questioned, although he has been removed from the retrial.

The start of the new trial provides little reason for optimism, many observers feel. Four of the accused are on the run, and many witnesses are too intimidated to testify and have not shown up. One, who did not wish to be photographed while giving testimony, claimed that the guards treated him correctly and that while he was indeed attached to an electric wire, this was “only for a few seconds.”

Katic asked the court to be questioned in Australia via a video link, a request the court will consider during the trial.

The Croatian government has repeatedly insisted that the country was perfectly capable of trying its own war-crimes cases and that some of the cases currently pending with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY) should be transferred to local courts. The ability of witnesses to testify via video link is a key argument in the government’s claim.

In April 1992, military policemen Milorad Paic and Mario Barisic, who is now a key witness in the case, were sent to prepare the prison ahead of a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They said they found prisoners “lying in blood on the floor, unable to get up, some of them without eyes, ears, or tongues.” They saw “walls covered in blood and a military field telephone with wires sticking out, also covered in blood.”
The nine prisoners Barisic and Paic saw were Montenegrin JNA soldiers who were subsequently removed from the prison at the order of then-defense minister Gojko Susak before the ICRC visit, without being registered.
Barisic and Paic reported their findings to their commanders, and then-president Franjo Tudjman was also informed.
Nothing was done to stop the torture, and Barisic soon concluded that the issue was systematically covered up on orders from the top.

The Croats (and Muslims) have been able to get away with severe torture, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing because U.S. policy was with them.

Mainstream news doesn't cover this, so the sheeple are forever in the dark, and the Croats who tortured people with electricity, cut out peoples' tongues, etc. are unknown.

The mainstream media pushes the idea that Serbs were reacting to memories of WWII atrocities and propaganda from Belgrade WHEN IN FACT the torture and killings were the reality they were living under once again.

"And we bombed the Serbs - who suffered more tortured, killed and ethnically cleansed than the Croats and Muslims put together - but they were the bad guys"

Oh please- they are ALL the bad guys in the Balkans. A history of centuries of torture and barbarity. So it's appalling what the Croats did, but spare me the pro-Serb lecture. Ask the folks in Srebenica about how nice the Serbs are.

The people of Srebrenica were cutting off the heads of Serbs and burning down their villages around there for years before the fall. The commander Naser Oric, showed these videos he and his men made and taped, and bragged to western reporters such as John Pomfret (Washington Post) and Bill Schiller (Toronto Star).

Besides, even if true, which I don't believe it to be - especially in the numbers (I think there were battles across Serb territory as they army left) - they were not mutilated and tortured on and on for days. Severe torture unto death is hundreds, if not thousands, or times worse!

A quick bullet death is preferable over having your bones broken, tongue cut out, eyeballs cut out, hooked up to a field phone and electricuted and having to suffer in that state for days!

Also, the Croats and Muslims were never sanctioned and bombed for their handiwork.

"A quick bullet death is preferable over having your bones broken, tongue cut out, eyeballs cut out, hooked up to a field phone and electricuted and having to suffer in that state for days!"

Well, I'm sure the women and children who were shot by Serb snipers while trying to go shopping or to school in places like Sarejevo were very grateful for Serb compassion! And don't tell me this never happened- I've seen video of women and children being shot at by Serb snipers in city streets.

One of the big media stories of the war - about the "Romeo and Juliet" couple in Sarajevo - who were gunned down crossing a bridge in Sarajevo - it turned they were killed by a Croat named Dragan Bozic. Did you know that?

The Serbs were blamed but there were several armed factions in Sarajevo.

Look at this PBS frontline documentary where the Muslim commander admits to the different armed factions controlling the bridge. Notice also how the Croat (Kapin) blames the Serbs and he doth protest to much (because it turns out in the end they did it):

transcript
CELO: [through interpreter] Bosko was a little nervous. Admira wasn't. I got it set up with our men, but I told him, "Wait until dark." There it's no-man's land, surrounded by four or five different forces -- Shatzo's police, special police units, HVO and Chetniks -- and it's impossible to make a deal with all of them.
DINO KAPIN: [through interpreter] We didn't know at all that somebody was supposed to cross. That zone is prohibited from any kind of movement.
NARRATOR: Dino Kapin was a commander of a Croatian unit allied with the Muslim army on the Sarajevo side of the front line. He had a rooftop view of the no-man's land where Admira and Bosko would try to cross.
Mr. KAPIN: [through interpreter] This-- I was on the front line on May 19th. It was a nice day. About 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, from the direction of our checkpoint, a man and a woman were walking with some bags towards their lines.

Look, Joan, any country like Serbia that makes a national hero out of a cold-blooded murderer like "Arkan" is a seriously sadistic country.

You're obviously a Serb nationalist, and it's fine that you support your country. And I know full well about the outrageous history of Crotia with Ante Pavelic, the Ustashe, etc. But Serbia is cut from the same cloth, and the whole world knows it. No one is clean in the Balkans- torture and barbarity is part of the culture there- Croats, Serbs, Muslims- the whole lot of them.

The Muslims and Croats within Serbia - in Belgrade - for example were never touched. They are living there today - including Albanians.

Not all Serbs make a hero out of Arkan. I haven't studied him, but some say he was some kind of a double agent - others believed he saved Serbian towns from Croat and Muslim attacks (which the western press didn't report, but which there is often good thorough evidence of by Serbs - names, autopsy reports, photos).

Many of the atrocities blamed on the Serbs have proven to be lies, exaggerations, or reactions to set-ups and provocations. The KLA was paid for killing Serb policemen; they were the ones who started the violence. How would the U.S. react to a group with bases in Mexico, and given international aid, to start killing Americans because Mexicans don't have state-financed schools and universities in their language. Which U.S. university has its entire curriculum in Spanish?

Census results show the allegedly "genocided" peoples - Bosnian Muslims and Albanians - are a greater percentage of the population (of Bosnia and Kosovo) than before the war. (Did the Jews become a greater percent of Poland, Germany, and Romania right after WWII ended?) Which goes to show you they (the Muslims and Croats) ethnically cleansed to a greater degree than others did to them and that it was civil war and that the real people genocided may be in fact the Serbs.

What did happen - did the Serbs call them bad names or something? No one appears to have been killed or injured. No Croat churches were destroyed nor Croat homes burned down. You aren't producing any names or photos.

As for the RS, Tudjman was having Croats from the area - even before the war - settle in more strongly Croat populated areas. Even today Croatia spends tons of money for Croats in Hercegovina but nothing for Croats in the RS. Croatia doesn't want to put their population where Croats would be a minority with no significant power - instead it prefers having Croats living in areas were Serbs and Muslims once were to keep them from coming back and to have Croat power consolidated rather than diluted out.

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