New trial ordered for Croatians in ‘92 torture, killing of Serbs

ZAGREB, Croatia – The Supreme Court ordered the retrial Thursday of eight former Croatian military officials exonerated by a lower court for the torture and slaying of ethnic Serbs in a wartime prison.

A five-member panel of judges upheld a prosecution appeal, ruling that the original trial was fraught with “serious flaws in criminal procedure as well as erroneous and incomplete facts.”

District prosecutors indicted the eight military police officers in early 2002, accusing them of random arrests, torture and killings of ethnic Serbs and Yugoslav army officers at the Lora military prison in 1992.

At least two inmates died of severe abuse. Scores of others were seriously injured at the jail in the coastal city of Split. Testimony also suggested detainees were deprived of food and water.

The war crimes trial highlighted one of the darkest chapters of Croatia’s war against rebel minority Serbs, who took up arms to oppose the country’s secession from the old Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation in 1991.

Human rights organizations roundly criticized Judge Slavko Lozina’s acquittal of the group in November 2002.

Lozina, a conservative often seen at nationalist demonstrations, refused to guarantee the safety of key witnesses from neighboring Serbia-Montenegro, local media have reported.