Opposition deputy in Croatia to be imprisoned on war crimes charges

October 26, 2006

Opposition deputy in Croatia to be imprisoned on war crimes charges

By SNJEZANA VUKIC, Associated Press Writer

ZAGREB Croatia: An opposition lawmaker in Croatia said he was being detained on war crimes charges Thursday, after a parliament commission lifted his parliamentary immunity at prosecutors' request.

Branimir Glavas, who was expelled from the governing party last year, is suspected in two ongoing cases of ordering the torture and killing of Serb civilians during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war.

On Thursday, he left his home in Osijek, eastern Croatia, saying he was traveling to a prison in the capital, Zagreb.

"I'm going directly to Remetinec," the Zagreb prison, Glavas told reporters.

Glavas would be the highest Croatian politician detained in recent history, and also the most senior official to be charged with such a grave crime.

Glavas, who was a founding member of the governing Croatian Democratic Union, has denied wrongdoing, and accused prosecutors, police and his former party of "fabricating" the two cases against him.

In one of the cases, Glavas is accused of allegedly ordering the 1991 killing of two Serbs and the torture of three others in Osijek, where he was seen as a warlord at the time.

In the other, he is accused of ordering the killing in Osijek of Serb civilians, whose bodies were then dumped into the local river, with their hands tied and mouth covered with a tape.

Glavas has not been formally indicted in either case, as the investigations are still under way, but prosecutors demanded his detention because of his possible influence on witnesses and the gravity of the charges.

The case illustrates Croatia's readiness to finally face and prosecute alleged war crimes committed by its own people, after long insisting that Croats were the sole victims in the war.

Several Croatian soldiers and military policemen have been sentenced for war crimes in the past few years. An impartial judiciary is also a key condition for Croatia's bid to join the European Union.

Critics accuse the government, however, of approving Glavas's prosecution only because he was expelled from the governing party after a row with Prime Minister Ivo Sanader. They say that, had he remained in the Croatian Democratic Union, the cases would have been dropped.

Glavas has since formed his own party, which won local elections in eastern Croatia last year. He also kept his parliament seat, now as an independent.

Local human rights groups and independent media have long reported about the revengeful wartime killings in Osijek.

The war erupted when minority Serbs took up arms to rebel against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia, and ended only in 1995.

Some war veterans have protested Glavas's prosecution, insisting that he was a brave fighter against Serb rebels.