Right organisations call on President Zoran Milanovic to strip Branimir Glavas of his general’s rank and other decorations following conviction over the wartime killings of Serb civilians.
Vuk Tesija
Branimir Glavas being taken for questioning by a Bosnian court , Sarajevo, May 2009. Photo: EPA/FEHIM DEMIR.
After the Croatian High Criminal Court on Wednesday upheld Branimir Glavas’s guilty verdict and seven-year prison sentence for war crimes in Osijek in 1991, several NGOs called on President Zoran Milanovic to strip him of his rank as general and decorations.
“It has been 35 years since the horrific murders of two people who were imprisoned and tortured by Glavas’s subordinates in a garage at his headquarters in Osijek, as well as the murders of several others who were brought to the banks of the Drava River with duct tape over their mouths, shot in the head, and thrown into the river,” wrote Zoran Pusic, head of the Antifascist League of the Republic of Croatia.
In 2010, then-President Ivo Josipovic stripped Glavas of his rank of general. But after becoming President, Milanovic overturned that decision in September 2021 and restored Glavas’s rank. Milanovic cited the Constitutional Court’s 2015 ruling overturning the verdict against Glavas and the other defendants and ordering a retrial. That retrial on Wednesday reached its final conclusion with a guilty verdict.
“In a process that has lasted 20 years, it is difficult to speak of justice for the victims and their family members. Yet President Zoran Milanovic invoked justice when he restored Glavas’s rank of general and his decorations in May 2021,” Pusic said.
Two other NGOs, Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past and the Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights Osijek, also called for Glavas to be stripped of his decorations and rank.
“Although the verdict has come late, it restores faith in the rule of law because it was delivered despite strong pressure,” they said in a statement. They noted that the first indictment in the case was filed in 2007, which was already 16 years after the crimes were committed.
Glavas served most of his initial jail sentence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he fled before the first verdict was handed down. However, in 2015, Croatia’s Constitutional Court overturned his conviction. The retrial began in 2017 – but only on Wednesday was a final verdict reached regarding the murders of Serb civilians in Osijek during the independence war.
Glavas has announced that he will challenge the verdict and, if necessary, appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
