Croatia Indicts Serb Ex-Paramilitary for Torturing, Killing Teenager

The Croatian State Attorney's Office in the city of Osijek said on Wednesday that it has indicted a former member of Serb paramilitary forces for involvement in the torture and murder of a minor after the occupation of the town of Vukovar in November 1991.

The unnamed suspect, a 70-year-old citizen of Croatia and Canada, is being held in custody due to the risk that he might flee.

The State Attorney's Office said the crime was committed on the evening of November 18, 1991, at the Velepromet industrial storage site in Vukovar, where Croatian civilians and members of the Croatian armed forces were detained, abused and killed after the fall of Vukovar to Serbian forces.

The defendant and two other members of Serb paramilitary units are alleged to have physically abused and killed the 16-year-old victims at the site.

"They hit him with their fists, kicked him and hit him with rifle butts all over his body, and when he was lying on the ground, they stabbed him several times with military bayonets and thus killed him," the State Attorney's Office said in a statement.

Vukovar was besieged from late August 1991 by the Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian paramilitaries.

The defenders of the Croatian town surrendered on November 18, after which all the non-Serb population was expelled, and a number of prisoners of war and civilians were deported to prisons and detention camps in Serbia, while 260 people were executed at the nearby Ovcara farm and in other places.

Ovcara became the biggest mass grave of the war in Croatia.

Over 3,000 soldiers and civilians died during the siege of Vukovar and its aftermath, 86 of them children.

Vukovar and the area around it were handed over to United Nations control after the war...

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