BELGRADE, June 8 /SRNA/ – Savo Strbac, head of the Veritas Documents and Information Centre, has confirmed that among the 14 Serbs identified by the Institute for Forensics in Zagreb are the remains of two elderly women whose murders were reviewed by a Croatian court and by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Gotovina et al. case.
He told Srna that the identified women were Sava Babic, aged 82, from Mokro Polje near Knin, and Djurdjija Mirkovic, aged 70, from Polaca near Knin and that there was irrefutable evidence that the women had been tortured to death but that it was obvious that the perpetrators would remain unpunished.
“Since the Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were acquitted by the ICTY Appeals Chamber of all crimes that the Croatian army committed during ‘The Storm’ and in ‘Sector South,’ that means that no one answered for the death of Sava Babic and Djurdjija Mirkovic either,” said Strbac.
He said that Sava Babic was paid a visit by UN representatives after Storm on August 28, 1995 and that she complained of being harassed by Croatian soldiers. When the UN came back on September 5, they found the old lady dead, seated in the front passenger seat of a yellow car, three wounds on her head and two in her chest.
“The Croatian police found a shell casing on the scene, which was found by forensic experts to had been fired by a pistol owned by Mario Dukic, a member of the 134th Home Guard Regiment of the 3rd Brigade, which Dukic used to kill Petar Bota in Kolarina near Benkovac on September 28, too,” said Strbac.
Dukic recalled that Dukic had been convicted of the murder of Bota, but acquitted of the murder of Babic, even though “it was determined that he bought the pistol used to kill Babic in mid September 1995 and Sava Babic died between September 1 and September 5.”
Strbac pointed out that in the case Gotovina et al., citing the conclusions of a Croatian court judgement, the ICTY too “wisely” ruled that there was not enough evidence as to who had killed the victim.
The murder of Djurdjia Mirkovic was reviewed in the same case, said Strbac.
“The Trial Chamber established that on August 12, 1995, two or three Croatian soldier came up to Smiljana Mirkovic and Djurdjija Mirkovic in Mirkovici, a hamlet of the village of Polace in the municipality of Knin, and that one of them, cursing their Serbian mother, shooting from the distance of 10 metres, shot and killed Djurdjija, and then they set both her and the house on fire,” recalled Strbac.
He emphasised that this crime had never been prosecuted thanks to the acquittals of Gotovina and Markac.
Apart from Babic and Mirkovic, the Institute for Forensics in Zagreb also identified Branko Stojcevic from Petrinja, Petar Krnjajic from Glina, Ignjatije Orlovic and Janko Grubor from Okucani.
Also identified are Dragan Samardzija, Milan Seatovic and Djuro Mandic from Okucani, Cedomir Gacesa and Milutin Drekovic from Pakrac, Pero Ribic from Slunj, Bogdan Milosevic from Sibenik and Sava Bursac from Donji Lapac.
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