ZAGREB, March 24 (Hina) - The Supreme Court has for the second time overturned a verdict by the Karlovac County Court that acquitted Mihajlo Hrastov of charges of execution of 13 Yugoslav army reservists in the autumn of 1991.
ZAGREB, March 24 (Hina) - The Supreme Court has for the second time
overturned a verdict by the Karlovac County Court that acquitted
Mihajlo Hrastov of charges of execution of 13 Yugoslav army reservists
in the autumn of 1991.#L#
A panel of five judges has accepted the appeal by the prosecution and
quashed last year's ruling by the Karlovac court, ordering a retrial
before a different panel, the Supreme Court announced on its web page
on Wednesday.
The Karlovac court first brought in an acquittal in 1993. After the
appeal proceedings, the Supreme Court returned the case to the same
court in 1994, citing "unclear circumstances". The trial was repeated
in 2000 and was completed last September with an acquittal again.
The Supreme Court upheld the claim by the prosecution that the
Karlovac court had established facts erroneously when it found that
Hrastov had acted in self-defence.
The Karlovac court found that disarmed JNA reservists had attacked
Hrastov and that as a result he had fired bursts from his machine-gun,
killing 13 of them. The Supreme Court said this conclusion was
seriously challenged by the evidence presented, primarily photographs
and sketches of the site where the incident occurred.
The Supreme Court agreed with the prosecution in its claim that the
Karlovac court "unreasonably and uncritically" accepted as true
everything Hrastov and a witness had stated in his defence, while
disregarding the physical evidence and testimony given by one of the
survivors of the incident, which took place on a Korana river bridge
near Karlovac on 21 September 1991.
Svetozar Sarac, a reservist who survived the incident, said during the
trial that Hrastov and members of a Croatian special police unit had
not been attacked. He claimed that three uniformed persons wearing
balaclavas appeared in the middle of the bridge and started shooting
at the prisoners from a distance of two to three metres.
The Supreme Court ordered a reconstruction of the event and an
additional examination by a ballistics expert during the retrial.
(Hina) vm