Gospic massacre
Encyclopedia
The Gospić massacre took place between 16–18 October 1991 in the town of Gospić
, a city in the district of Lika
in Croatia
. The massacre
came three days after the massacre in the village (11 kilometers away) of Široka Kula
(40 Croatian civilians were massacred, including entire families). Between 23 and 100 local civilians (mostly Serbs) were murdered by members of a Croatian military unit. A Croatian county court later cited 50 people were killed; almost half (24) were ethnic Serbs. Although Miroslav Bajramović admitted to responsibility for the deaths of 90 to 100 people, almost all Serbs, Serbian sources claim that 150 Serbs disappeared. The commander of the unit, Mirko Norac
, was convicted in 2003, along with four others, for his involvement in the massacre.
). The front formed a salient
just to the east of Gospić, and the town itself saw a siege between Croatian National Guard
forces and a Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) unit trapped for a while in the town's barracks, which eventually fell to Croatian forces. The town was heavily shelled by Serb forces seeking to capture it in order to advance to the coast, which lies only about 30 km away.
Gospić had always been predominantly ethnically Croatian city, which had a large ethnic Serb minority. However many Serbs fled during the war as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated. The Croatian government used radio and television broadcasts to appeal for "loyal" Serbs to return.
The killings were carried out by the Croatian Interior Ministry's First Zagreb Special Unit, nicknamed "Autumn Rains". It was under the authority of Mirko Norac
, the commander of Interior Ministry forces in the area, and ultimately was answerable to Interior Minister Ivan Vekić
. Between 16 October and 18 October, the unit rounded up mostly, but not exclusively, Serb locals in Gospić, Karlobag
, Pazarište and Lipova Glavica, pulling them out of communal bomb shelters and loading them onto military trucks. They were taken away and killed, their bodies later disposed of.
According to Miroslav Bajramović, a former member of the unit:
It was later determined by a Croatian court that Norac had personally killed a woman during an execution of civilians and, with Orešković, had ordered the killing of at least ten civilians in Pazarište.
The Croatian government set up a commission of enquiry to investigate
the events. Ivan Dasović, the head of the Gospić police department, told investigators about the meeting (which he had attended), the carrying out of the killings and the subsequent celebrations among the perpetrators. Orešković and Norac were named as the main culprits, but the debriefings were kept classified, and the Croatian government then publicly denied that there had been any mass killings at Gospić.
On 1 September 1997, the Croatian newspaper Feral Tribune
published a detailed eyewitness account by Miroslav Bajramović, who said that he had been involved in carrying out the massacre. The confession caused a political outcry in Croatia; Norac's supporters denounced it as an attempt to slander a man whom they saw as a war hero, while the political opposition and human rights groups attacked the government for what they saw as an unjustifiable cover-up. Croatia's president Franjo Tuđman claimed that the war crimes allegations could have been a plot by "some agents provocateurs
in order to compromise the Croatian authorities."
Bajramović later retracted parts of his confession and was acquitted of murder charges by a Croatian court. However, this did not satisfy the prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY), who put considerable political pressure on the Croatian government to re-open the case and bring to justice those responsible for the massacre.
party in the Croatian parliamentary election of 2000
, the new Croatian government sought to investigate war crimes committed by its forces and pledged to cooperate with the ICTY. The new deputy justice minister, Ranko Marijan, expressed dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the Gospić case: "The justice system, together with the police, were hibernating ... I'm not confident that the Croatian police properly conducted their work."
Forensic pathologists from the ICTY were invited to Gospić in May 2000 to examine a suspected mass grave site identified by local people. During a two-week investigation, the team found ten skeletons in a septic tank in the town's largely destroyed Serb area. The killers had gone to some trouble to hide the evidence, having buried the bodies under layers of clay and rubble. Despite finding this prima facie evidence of a crime, the investigators faced considerable hostility from Croatian nationalists. Their visit prompted complaints by the town's mayor and an angry street protest by thousands of Croatian war veterans.
Presiding Judge Ika Šarić of the Rijeka County Court was given the task of establishing a prosecutable case. Over the course of the next year, she and her colleagues tracked down scores of witnesses, travelling to Serbia and Montenegro
and other countries in order to obtain their testimony. They also managed to obtain the earlier videotaped debriefing of Ivan Dašović, which had disappeared from Croatian Interior Ministry archives in unexplained circumstances, and had its classification as a state secret removed. The investigation caused anger among some in the Croatian military. Twelve Croatian generals, including Mirko Norac
, issued a public statement criticising the government's resolve to prosecute war crimes committed by the Croatian Army. As a result, they were sacked by the country's president, Stjepan Mesić
.
After the end of Milosevic' regime in Serbia, also there Investigation about war crime in Licki Osik proceeds slowly.
. Norac himself went into hiding but handed himself into custody on 21 February following an agreement with the government that he would not be extradited to the ICTY. He was reported to have said that "The allegations against me are completely unfounded and will easily be disproved in a court of law." For its part, the ICTY said that it had no indictment against Norac over the Gospić massacre and did not intend to press one, but would leave the matter to the Croatian authorities.
On 5 March 2001, the Rijeka County Court indicted Orešković,
Norac, Stjepan Grandić, Ivica Rožić and Milan Čanić on charges of committing war crimes against Serb civilians in and around Gospić
in October 1991. The charges alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes against the civilian population and violations of international law
. 50 victims were cited, of whom almost half (24) were identified as Serbs.
The indictment caused further nationalist outrage, and the subsequent trial did not start until 28 January 2002, following lengthy legal arguments. The trial lasted more than 14 months and saw over 150 witnesses testifying, including eighteen survivors who testified in Belgrade
. Witness testimony was offered not only by Serb victims but also by Croat soldiers and civilians who had witnessed the abductions and killings in 1991. The trial concluded on 24 March 2003 with the conviction of Orešković, Norac and Grandić. Rožić and Canić were acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence. Orešković was sentenced to imprisonment for 15 years, with Norac receiving 12 years and Grandić 10 years.
Gospic
Gospić is a town in the mountainous and sparsely populated region of Lika, Croatia. It is the administrative centre of Lika-Senj county. Gospić is located near the Lika River in the middle of a karst field....
, a city in the district of Lika
Lika
Lika is a mountainous region in central Croatia, roughly bound by the Velebit mountain from the southwest and the Plješevica mountain from the northeast. On the north-west end Lika is bounded by Ogulin-Plaški basin, and on the south-east by the Malovan pass...
in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
. The massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
came three days after the massacre in the village (11 kilometers away) of Široka Kula
Široka Kula massacre
The Široka Kula massacre was committed by rebel Croatian Serb forces in the Croatian village of Široka Kula during the Croatian War of Independence beginning on 10 October 1991...
(40 Croatian civilians were massacred, including entire families). Between 23 and 100 local civilians (mostly Serbs) were murdered by members of a Croatian military unit. A Croatian county court later cited 50 people were killed; almost half (24) were ethnic Serbs. Although Miroslav Bajramović admitted to responsibility for the deaths of 90 to 100 people, almost all Serbs, Serbian sources claim that 150 Serbs disappeared. The commander of the unit, Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac is a former general of the Croatian Army. In 2003 he became the first Croatian Army general to be found guilty of war crimes by a Croatian court after he was transferred from The Hague...
, was convicted in 2003, along with four others, for his involvement in the massacre.
Background
At the time of the massacre, Gospić was a front-line town in the war between the Croatian government forces and rebel Serb forces (of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serb KrajinaRepublic of Serbian Krajina
The Republic of Serbian Krajina was a self-proclaimed Serb entity within Croatia. Established in 1991, it was not recognized internationally. It formally existed from 1991 to 1995, having been initiated a year earlier via smaller separatist regions. The name Krajina means "frontier"...
). The front formed a salient
Salients, re-entrants and pockets
A salient is a battlefield feature that projects into enemy territory. The salient is surrounded by the enemy on three sides, making the troops occupying the salient vulnerable. The enemy's line facing a salient is referred to as a re-entrant...
just to the east of Gospić, and the town itself saw a siege between Croatian National Guard
Croatian National Guard
The Croatian National Guard was the name of the first modern Croatian military force. Croatian president Franjo Tuđman signed to law the Decree of Formation of the Croatian National Guard on April 20, 1991 which became the first professional armed forces with defence and training duties.These...
forces and a Yugoslav People's Army
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
(JNA) unit trapped for a while in the town's barracks, which eventually fell to Croatian forces. The town was heavily shelled by Serb forces seeking to capture it in order to advance to the coast, which lies only about 30 km away.
Gospić had always been predominantly ethnically Croatian city, which had a large ethnic Serb minority. However many Serbs fled during the war as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated. The Croatian government used radio and television broadcasts to appeal for "loyal" Serbs to return.
Events of October 1991
On 6 October 1991, members of the local Croatian territorial defence force attended a meeting called by Tihomir Orešković, the secretary of the Lika district crisis headquarters. The attendees agreed to draw up a list of Serbs who had returned to Gospić, ostensibly to ensure that none were hostile to the Croatian government. However, as a subsequent war crimes trial later determined, the list was actually used to target ethnic Serb community leaders in a systematic mass killing. It was suggested that the trigger for making the list was the killing of 30 Croatians by Serbs in a nearby village and the destruction of Gospić's Roman Catholic church.The killings were carried out by the Croatian Interior Ministry's First Zagreb Special Unit, nicknamed "Autumn Rains". It was under the authority of Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac is a former general of the Croatian Army. In 2003 he became the first Croatian Army general to be found guilty of war crimes by a Croatian court after he was transferred from The Hague...
, the commander of Interior Ministry forces in the area, and ultimately was answerable to Interior Minister Ivan Vekić
Ivan Vekić
Ivan Vekić is a Croatian politician and lawyer. He was one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union and served as the Croatian Minister of Interior during the Croatian War of Independence.-Biography:...
. Between 16 October and 18 October, the unit rounded up mostly, but not exclusively, Serb locals in Gospić, Karlobag
Karlobag
Karlobag is a historic and picturesque seaside municipality on the Adriatic coast in Croatia, located underneath Velebit overlooking the island of Pag, west of Gospić and south of Senj. The Gacka river also runs through the area...
, Pazarište and Lipova Glavica, pulling them out of communal bomb shelters and loading them onto military trucks. They were taken away and killed, their bodies later disposed of.
According to Miroslav Bajramović, a former member of the unit:
"Our group executed between 90 and 100 people in less than a month there ... The order for Gospić was: "ethnically cleanse." So we killed the directors of the post office and the hospital, restaurant owners, and other assorted Serbs. The killing was done by shooting at point-blank range, since we did not have much time. I repeat, orders from above were to reduce the percentage of Serbs in Gospić."
It was later determined by a Croatian court that Norac had personally killed a woman during an execution of civilians and, with Orešković, had ordered the killing of at least ten civilians in Pazarište.
Exposing the massacre
The Gospić massacre came to public attention in November 1991 when the Serbian Democratic Forum, a political party representing Croatian Serbs loyal to the Zagreb government, announced that it had received reports of up to 120 "disappearances" in the Gospić area between 17 October 1991 and 1 November 1991.The Croatian government set up a commission of enquiry to investigate
the events. Ivan Dasović, the head of the Gospić police department, told investigators about the meeting (which he had attended), the carrying out of the killings and the subsequent celebrations among the perpetrators. Orešković and Norac were named as the main culprits, but the debriefings were kept classified, and the Croatian government then publicly denied that there had been any mass killings at Gospić.
On 1 September 1997, the Croatian newspaper Feral Tribune
Feral Tribune
Feral Tribune was a Croatian political weekly magazine. Based in Split, it first started as a political satire supplement in Nedjeljna Dalmacija before evolving into an independent satirical weekly paper in 1993...
published a detailed eyewitness account by Miroslav Bajramović, who said that he had been involved in carrying out the massacre. The confession caused a political outcry in Croatia; Norac's supporters denounced it as an attempt to slander a man whom they saw as a war hero, while the political opposition and human rights groups attacked the government for what they saw as an unjustifiable cover-up. Croatia's president Franjo Tuđman claimed that the war crimes allegations could have been a plot by "some agents provocateurs
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
in order to compromise the Croatian authorities."
Bajramović later retracted parts of his confession and was acquitted of murder charges by a Croatian court. However, this did not satisfy the prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a...
(ICTY), who put considerable political pressure on the Croatian government to re-open the case and bring to justice those responsible for the massacre.
Investigations
Following Tuđman's death in 1999 and the defeat of his Croatian Democratic UnionCroatian Democratic Union
The Croatian Democratic Union is the main center-right political party in Croatia. It is the biggest and strongest individual Croatian party since independence of Croatia. The Christian democratic HDZ governed Croatia from 1990 to 2000 and, in partial coalition, from 2003...
party in the Croatian parliamentary election of 2000
Croatian parliamentary election, 2000
Elections for the Chamber of Representatives of the Croatian Parliament were held on January 3, 2000. These were the first elections to be held after the expiration of a full term of the previous Chamber....
, the new Croatian government sought to investigate war crimes committed by its forces and pledged to cooperate with the ICTY. The new deputy justice minister, Ranko Marijan, expressed dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the Gospić case: "The justice system, together with the police, were hibernating ... I'm not confident that the Croatian police properly conducted their work."
Forensic pathologists from the ICTY were invited to Gospić in May 2000 to examine a suspected mass grave site identified by local people. During a two-week investigation, the team found ten skeletons in a septic tank in the town's largely destroyed Serb area. The killers had gone to some trouble to hide the evidence, having buried the bodies under layers of clay and rubble. Despite finding this prima facie evidence of a crime, the investigators faced considerable hostility from Croatian nationalists. Their visit prompted complaints by the town's mayor and an angry street protest by thousands of Croatian war veterans.
Presiding Judge Ika Šarić of the Rijeka County Court was given the task of establishing a prosecutable case. Over the course of the next year, she and her colleagues tracked down scores of witnesses, travelling to Serbia and Montenegro
Serbia and Montenegro
Serbia and Montenegro was a country in southeastern Europe, formed from two former republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia : Serbia and Montenegro. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was established in 1992 as a federation called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...
and other countries in order to obtain their testimony. They also managed to obtain the earlier videotaped debriefing of Ivan Dašović, which had disappeared from Croatian Interior Ministry archives in unexplained circumstances, and had its classification as a state secret removed. The investigation caused anger among some in the Croatian military. Twelve Croatian generals, including Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac
Mirko Norac is a former general of the Croatian Army. In 2003 he became the first Croatian Army general to be found guilty of war crimes by a Croatian court after he was transferred from The Hague...
, issued a public statement criticising the government's resolve to prosecute war crimes committed by the Croatian Army. As a result, they were sacked by the country's president, Stjepan Mesić
Stjepan Mesić
Stjepan "Stipe" Mesić is a Croatian politician and former President of Croatia. Before his ten-year presidential term between 2000 and 2010 he held the posts of Speaker of the Croatian Parliament , Prime Minister of Croatia , the last President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia , Secretary General...
.
After the end of Milosevic' regime in Serbia, also there Investigation about war crime in Licki Osik proceeds slowly.
Prosecutions and convictions
In February 2001, the Croatian State Prosecutor's Office issued an arrest warrant against Norac and several others. The warrant caused an immediate outcry among war veterans, who set up barricades on roads and organised a 100,000-strong demonstration in SplitSplit (city)
Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...
. Norac himself went into hiding but handed himself into custody on 21 February following an agreement with the government that he would not be extradited to the ICTY. He was reported to have said that "The allegations against me are completely unfounded and will easily be disproved in a court of law." For its part, the ICTY said that it had no indictment against Norac over the Gospić massacre and did not intend to press one, but would leave the matter to the Croatian authorities.
On 5 March 2001, the Rijeka County Court indicted Orešković,
Norac, Stjepan Grandić, Ivica Rožić and Milan Čanić on charges of committing war crimes against Serb civilians in and around Gospić
Gospic
Gospić is a town in the mountainous and sparsely populated region of Lika, Croatia. It is the administrative centre of Lika-Senj county. Gospić is located near the Lika River in the middle of a karst field....
in October 1991. The charges alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes against the civilian population and violations of international law
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
. 50 victims were cited, of whom almost half (24) were identified as Serbs.
The indictment caused further nationalist outrage, and the subsequent trial did not start until 28 January 2002, following lengthy legal arguments. The trial lasted more than 14 months and saw over 150 witnesses testifying, including eighteen survivors who testified in Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
. Witness testimony was offered not only by Serb victims but also by Croat soldiers and civilians who had witnessed the abductions and killings in 1991. The trial concluded on 24 March 2003 with the conviction of Orešković, Norac and Grandić. Rožić and Canić were acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence. Orešković was sentenced to imprisonment for 15 years, with Norac receiving 12 years and Grandić 10 years.