ZAGREB/SPLIT, Oct 2 (Hina) - The Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO) maintains the Lora case is one of the gravest instances of organised killing and torturing in the 1990s Homeland War. It is also of the opinion the
investigation into the case has been launched too late as all the causes mentioned in it were publicly known ten years ago, when the crimes were committed. In Tuesday's statement signed by Nikola Viskovic, the HHO says it has urged competent Croatian bodies on several occasions to take measures against the perpetrators whose names were mentioned in public. On Sept. 29, an investigating judge with the Split County Court launched an investigation into events which occurred at the southern Adriatic city's naval base Lora in 1992 and later, and ordered that seven of eight suspects be kept in custody. An arrest warrant was issued after Tomo Duic, a former Lora commandant. A preliminary
ZAGREB/SPLIT, Oct 2 (Hina) - The Croatian Helsinki Committee for
Human Rights (HHO) maintains the Lora case is one of the gravest
instances of organised killing and torturing in the 1990s Homeland
War. It is also of the opinion the investigation into the case has
been launched too late as all the causes mentioned in it were
publicly known ten years ago, when the crimes were committed.
In Tuesday's statement signed by Nikola Viskovic, the HHO says it
has urged competent Croatian bodies on several occasions to take
measures against the perpetrators whose names were mentioned in
public.
On Sept. 29, an investigating judge with the Split County Court
launched an investigation into events which occurred at the
southern Adriatic city's naval base Lora in 1992 and later, and
ordered that seven of eight suspects be kept in custody.
An arrest warrant was issued after Tomo Duic, a former Lora
commandant.
A preliminary investigation showed suspicion was founded that the
eight had committed crimes against humanity, international law,
and war crimes against civilians.
One of the consequences of the delay in the Lora case is the public's
failure to grasp all the aspects of the political and legal
responsibility of the perpetrators, but also of the whole chain of
competent political and judicial figures, starting from current
Military Police head Mate Lausic, according to the HHO.
The Lora case is the bloodiest, although not the sole failure of the
former authorities which fostered among right-wing extremists and
terrorists the conviction that they cannot be prosecuted and can
continue to act unpunished, the HHO maintains.
The organisation maintains that, to its knowledge, Lora was also
the core of an expansive bombing campaign in Split and one of the
centres of forced evictions of people from hundreds of flats.
(hina) ha sb