http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/30/europe/EU-GEN-Croatia-War-Crimes.p hp
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (FRANCE) Croatian court convicts general of war crimes; acquits another The Associated Press Friday, May 30, 2008 ZAGREB, Croatia: A court convicted a retired Croatian general of war crimes Friday for failing to stop his soldiers from torturing and killing Serbs in a wartime operation once deplored by U.N. peacekeepers as a "scorched earth" campaign. Retired Gen. Mirko Norac condoned crimes committed by those under his command, Zagreb district court judge Marin Mrcela said in the ruling. He sentenced Norac to seven years in prison. The judge acquitted another retired general, Rahim Ademi, in the case. Norac and Ademi are the highest-ranking officers to be tried by the local court on war crimes charges - a sensitive issue in a country that long diminished or justified crimes committed by its own people in the 1991-95 Serbo-Croat war. Both Norac and Ademi had pleaded not guilty and claimed throughout the yearlong trial that the other had been in charge. But the judge said he had acquitted Ademi after learning that, though he was formally a commander, his real authority had been "reduced" at the time. He said Norac had failed to prevent - and punish - soldiers who killed 23 Serb civilians and five soldiers in September 1993 as Croatian forces briefly retook a central area seized by Serb rebels two years earlier. At least five of the victims were tortured, including an 84-year-old blind woman sprayed with bullets on her porch and a 31-year-old man allegedly dragged behind a car before being set alight, the prosecutor said. About 300 Serb homes were robbed and burned. "It was his duty to prevent" the crimes, Mrcela said of Norac. "By not taking legal actions against the soldiers after learning that they committed war crimes, a commander (Norac) in fact provided a pattern on how soldiers should behave," Mrcela said in the ruling. He said Norac received less than the maximum 20-year sentence because he was not convicted for ordering the atrocities. United Nations peacekeepers, deployed in the area at the time, accused Croatians of intentionally killing civilians and burning their houses in a "scorched earth" policy. Croatia began prosecuting war crimes committed by Croats a few years ago, after long maintaining that only Serbs - who rebelled against Croatia's independence in 1991, triggering the war - were to be blamed for the atrocities. Norac's case was the first ceded to the Croatian judiciary by the U.N. war crimes court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, which has been prosecuting crimes from the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Norac is already serving a 12-year sentence for orchestrating the 1991 killing of Serb civilians in the central area of Gospic.
