“Medak Pocket victims were not civilians”

“Medak Pocket victims were not civilians”

Former generals Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi are accused of responsibility for the killings of about 30 Serb civilians in September 1993, following Zagreb's offensive to retake land seized by Serbs in the war in Croatia, which began in 1991.

Ademi and Norac, who were at the time commanders in the area known as the Medak Pocket in central Croatia, are the highest-ranking Croatian officers to be tried for atrocities against Serbs.

Both have pleaded not guilty. Their trial opened last month.

Ivan Jarnjak, who was interior minister in 1993, testified Monday that “there were de facto no civilians” in the Serb-dominated villages in the Medak Pocket.

“They were all armed, in service of the Serb paramilitaries and they actively fought there,” he said, testifying for the prosecution. “When two armies fight, something must be destroyed and somebody must die.”

The indictment lists about 30 victims, including an 84-year-old blind woman sprayed with bullets on her porch, a man set on fire and a 31-year-old mentally retarded man who was allegedly tied to a car by Croatian troops and dragged around before being incinerated.

United Nations peacekeepers in the area at the time accused Croatian troops of intentionally killing civilians and burning their houses, carrying out a “scorched earth” policy.

Independent observers have claimed that Croats were avenging their own victims by killing ordinary Serbs.

But some in Croatia maintain that all Serbs in the area took up arms to fight against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia.

Local courts have convicted several Croats of war crimes in the past few years, but the trial of Norac and Ademi will test Croatia's ability to prosecute impartially.

If convicted, both generals face 20 years in prison. Norac is already serving a 12-year sentence for orchestrating the killing of Serb civilians in the central area of Gospić in 1991.

The trial is expected to last a year.