The Australian daily reported on Wednesday that "Antun Gudelj, also known by the first name Ante, was arrested by Australian Federal Police last month following an extradition request from the Croatian Government. Croatian authorities are seeking to try him on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. The 59-year-old has been in custody since his arrest on September 20. He appeared before Central Local Court today via videolink."
A lawyer for Gudelj, Daniel Covington, said prosecutors had provided him with material relating to the extradition request, but his client had yet to read it.
Magistrate Allan Moore formally refused Mr Gudelj bail and adjourned the case until November 1.
Gudelj was first convicted and subsequently pardoned for the murder of Reihl-Kir, Goran Zobundzija and Milan Knezevic and the attempted murder of Mirko Tubic near the eastern Croatian city of Osijek on 1 July 1991.
Gudelj was sentenced in absence to 20 years' imprisonment in 1994. A court established that on that day in 1991 he fired 30 shots from a Kalashnikov at a car in which the aforementioned four were going to negotiations on the normalisation of relations with rebel Croatian Serbs.
Shortly after the massacre Gudelj fled Croatia and was arrested by the German police and extradited to Croatia in 1996. The Supreme Court quashed the initial ruling and returned the case to Osijek's County Court. In May 1997 the Supreme Court discontinued the criminal proceedings and Gudelj was pardoned under the General Amnesty Act. He went to Australia given that he has Australian citizenship as well.
The pardon was justified with the fact that the killings were war-related and that Gudelj committed them as a member of the reserve police who was guarding a police checkpoint towards Tenja near Osijek.
One month later, Reihl-Kir's widow Jadranka filed a constitutional lawsuit and the state prosecutor also filed a request to establish that the pardon could not be applied in this case. In November 2000, the Supreme Court established that there had been no legal conditions for the pardon. However, nothing changed because the Supreme Court could only establish that fact but not interfere with the contentious final ruling.
In March 2001, the Constitutional Court accepted Jadranka Reihl-Kir's lawsuit and quashed the Supreme Court's decision on the application of the General Amnesty Law.
The request for Gudelj's extradition was first sent to Canberra in late 2001, but a lot of time was lost on procedural issues. The last request was sent on January 17 this year after Croatia and Australia harmonised legal issues.
A trial is currently under way against Gudelj at the County Court in Osijek for the murder and attempted murder from July 1991.