Croatia Charges Serb Ex-Paramilitary with War Crime

Police said on Friday that they have arrested an unnamed 50-year-old former Serbian paramilitary fighter and charged him with committing a war crime in a settlement near Vukovar in eastern Croatia, two months before the fall of the besieged town.

The police and the State Attorney's Office in Osijek suspect that the man, who was 20 at the time and was allegedly a member of the Petrova Gora paramilitary unit, abused civilians and participated in actions that led to the killing of civilians on September 15, 1991.

The incident occurred during an armed attack by the joint forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA and Serbian paramilitary units on the settlement of Sajmiste.

The State Attorney's Office, which interviewed the man on Friday, said that it proposed that he be remanded in custody due to the risk of escape, obstructing the investigation and "repeating the crime".

Police alleged that the suspect and his fellow paramilitaries found a group of civilians in the basement of a house, threatened them with firearms, and took the women and children out into the yard followed by the seven men, who they kicked and hit with their fists and rifle butts.

They started to take the women and children away but were stopped by a Serbian officer and then returned all the civilians to the house.

"The next day, unknown members of the Serbian paramilitary units took a wounded 55-year-old [from the house] and killed him," police said in a statement.

Police also said that during a post-war exhumation, six bodies of people who were killed during the incident in Sajmiste were found and identified, while one victim is still registered as a missing person.

The JNA and Serbian paramilitaries besieged and shelled Vukovar intensively...