GRABOVAC: I EXPECT WAR CRIMES AGAINST SERBS IN POSAVINA TO BE PROSECUTED

BROD, AUGUST 10 /SRNA/ - The president of the Organization for the Search of Fallen Soldiers and Missing Civilians from Brod, Marko Grabovac, said he expects the judiciary at the level of BiH to begin prosecuting those who ordered and committed war crimes against Serb civilians in Posavina, following the Doboj District Court’s conviction of Dejan Tošić, a Croatian citizen from Županja and a member of the Croatian Defense Council /HVO/, for crimes against Serb civilians.

“Bringing to justice those who ordered and committed these crimes would be highly significant in shedding light on the war crimes committed against Serbs and the disappearance of Roma from four buses in the areas of Sijekovac and Brod in 1992,” Grabovac told SRNA. Grabovac emphasized that the families of the fallen and missing from Brod are dissatisfied with the very light sentence handed down to Dejan Tošić by the Doboj District Court for the serious war crime against Serb civilians, but they still hope that justice will eventually catch up with the perpetrators, as war crimes do not fall under a statute of limitations. He added that there are still 36 missing Serbs, mostly civilians, being searched for in the Brod area. He emphasized that the families of the fallen and missing have been waiting for justice for over 30 years, pointing out that in the Brod and Derventa areas, where members of the Croatian Army and HVO operated in cooperation with Muslim forces, there were multiple mass graves of Serbs, as well as seven detention camps and prisons. Grabovac recalled that the first crimes against Serbs were committed in the Brod area, where the first camps for Serbs were established, and that the burning and looting of Serb property were carried out under the command of the Croatian Army, which at that time launched an aggression against BiH. “Besides Nijaz Čaušević, known as Medo from Slavonski Brod, a large number of commanders and perpetrators of war crimes against Serbs in the Brod area were included in the criminal complaint we forwarded in 2001 to the Hague Tribunal, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, and the judiciary of Croatia,” Grabovac stated. Members of the Croatian Army and Croatian-Muslim paramilitary formations from the then municipality of Bosanski Brod killed nine Serb civilians on March 26, 1992, in Sijekovac near Brod, which was the first mass crime against Serbs in BiH. On August 5, the Doboj District Court sentenced Croatian citizen Dejan Tošić from Županja to three and a half years in prison for war crimes against Serb civilians committed as a member of the HVO in 1992. The court found Tošić guilty because, as a member of the 103rd Brigade of the HVO, he physically and psychologically abused detained Serb civilians in prisons in Derventa from April until the end of May 1992.