"On January 4 Bajramovic started serving his term, which includes almost a year spent in custody," court spokesman Kresimir Devcic told Hina. Devcic added that Bajramovic was currently at the psychosocial diagnostics ward of the prison in Zagreb's suburb of Remetinec, where all convicts have to stay before they are transferred to a penitentiary.
Bajramovic was handed down a final sentence in May last year.
Some media linked his arrival at the Zagreb prison with a pre-investigation into Tomislav Mercep, who at the start of the war in Croatia commanded a reserve police unit which included Bajramovic and the other four convicts in the Pakracka Poljana case. They were found guilty of murdering a man named Sasa and of the unlawful detention and extortion of three Serb men from Zagreb in late 1991. The three Serb men, Milos Ivosevic, Rade Pajic and Marko Grujic, were taken to a makeshift camp in Pakracka Poljana, some 80 kilometres southeast of Zagreb, where they were later found dead. Their executors were never discovered.
The Pakracka Poljana case came to the limelight in 1992, after an investigation into the murder of the Zec family from Zagreb revealed information on alleged crimes committed by members of Mercep's unit. However, the case remained shelved until September 1997, when Bajramovic told Feral Tribune weekly that 280 people had been killed in Pakracka Poljana, of which 72 had been killed by him. That same year, the first indictment was issued, and in 1999 the five men were acquitted pending appeal. The Supreme Court quashed the court ruling and ordered a retrial, which ended in May 2005.
Mercep's alleged involvement in war crimes against Serbs in Pakracka Poljana, Gospic, Vukovar and Zagreb in late 1991 and early 1992 was made topical again when the CIA recently published a 1995 report on its web site.
Mercep refused to comment on the CIA report, calling it nonsense.
The Hague war crimes tribunal in February last year sent the prosecution in Croatia extensive documentation on war crimes committed against Serbs in eastern Slavonia and Pakracka Poljana in 1991.
The Office of the Chief State Prosecutor said that it was analysing the documents.