SUPREME COURT EXAMINES APPEAL IN SVETOZAR KARAN CASE

ZAGREB, Jan 29(Hina) - A panel of five Supreme Court judges met in open session on Thursday to examine the appeal by Svetozar Karan from Korenica, who had been sentenced to a single prison term of 13 years on two counts of war crimes against prisoners of war.#L# The judges will reach a decision on the appeal in closed session and will inform the parties and the public of the verdict in writing. The State Prosecutor upheld the part of the appeal requesting that the sentence be quashed and the proceedings renewed because of incorrect facts, the misapplication of substantive and procedural law, and the length of the sentence. The case aroused public interest after the publication of the non-final judgement of the Gospic County Court in the media last July, which charged Karan with committing genocide over Croats together with his ethnic kin "not only in the last war but also for more than 500 years". It also said that "the accused and his ancestors arrived here with Ottoman Turks to destroy Croatia". Karan was sentenced to 13 years in prison because as a member of the reserve police force of the self-styled Serb Autonomous District of Krajina and later as a member of the military police, he had personally beaten and inhumanely treated prisoners of war in Korenica in 1991 and in Farkasici in 1995. Karan is also held responsible as a police commander. Karan denied all the charges, saying that he had not been at the two places when the prisoners were maltreated. The appeal also said that the Gospic court had not allowed testimonies that would have been to Karan's benefit. The defence considered unacceptable the explanation by the court that Karan had returned to Croatia in 2000 "to live off this country, to weaken it economically and ruin it for the purpose of implementing the memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences". (Hina) vm sb