Korana bridge killings

The massacre was extensively covered in a November 1991 report by Amnesty International which detailed several abuses of war committed that year. According to the report, on the evening of 21 September a group of majority Serb JNA members, drove two vehicles from the town of Slunj towards a JNA garrison in Karlovac which was under attack.[1] Once they reached the bridge over the Korana river, they were met by a special unit of the police force of Karlovac who ordered them to surrender.[1] The group was reportedly split into two with nine of the reservists being driven to police headquarters in Karlovac and later detained in Zagreb.[1] Between 14 and 16 others remained at the bridge under the guard of Hrastov and other police officers, who were waiting for vehicles from the Karlovac police headquarters to come and collect them.[1] As they waited, three tanks from the JNA garrison in Karlovac approached and began to fire once they were within 500 metres of the bridge.[1] Press reports indicate that at this point the reservists shouted or signalled to those in charge of the tanks to stop firing, which they did.[1] The group of reservists, having laid down their arms, were then ordered by Hrastov to walk over to the other side of the bridge and line up against the bridge parapet before they were shot and killed.[1]

One of the survivors, reservist Svetozar Sarac who was a trial witness, stated that he and his fellow JNA soldiers had stepped out of their vehicle in order to surrender and had made clear moves to show their intention to do so.[2] They put their weapons and equipment on the pavement on the bridge and lay on the ground on their stomachs, folding their arms behind their neck.[2] Then they were ordered to step off the bridge and walk on a path leading towards a fishermen's hut where they were told to lie down again and shortly thereafter one man's throat was slit.[2] Sarac also testified that the prisoners were then ordered to go back to the bridge, before three masked persons carrying automatic rifles approached them from the direction of the Korana Hotel and started shooting.[2]

The case against Hrastov began in May 1992, when he was first indicted with killing soldiers in breach of the Hague convention and the Geneva conventions.[2] He was found not guilty after judges ruled he had acted in self defence, though the Supreme Court of Croatia quashed the verdict and ordered a retrial.[2]

The proceedings began again from scratch in 2000, and Hrastov was found not guilty for a second time in a 2002 verdict, again incurring the intervention of the Supreme Court and the order for another retrial.[2]

The third trial started in 2004 and ended with an acquittal in March 2007.[2] However, in May 2009, Hrastov was convicted to eight years in prison by the Supreme Court.[3] After the appeal chamber reduced the sentence to seven years, Croatia’s constitutional court struck out the sentence in November 2009.[3] Hrastov was released from prison in 2011 and a new trial began in January 2012.[3] In September 2012 the trial ended and Hrastov was jailed for four years by the Supreme Court.[4] The trial chamber concluded that he killed the prisoners after they surrendered. "There was no self-defence, nor did the prisoners try to escape, so the shooting could not be justified by international laws," Judge Zarko Dundovic said.[3] Following an appeal, the Supreme Court upheld its verdict in 2015.[5]

The case has been described as the longest war crimes process in Croatian judicial history.[4]