Serbia prosecutes witness who revealed war crimes against Serbs in Croatia

Serbia Prosecutes Witness Who Revealed War Crimes Against Serbs in Croatia

From key witness to defendant. This is the path of Krunoslav Fehir, whose testimony was crucial in the trial of Branimir Glavas in Croatia for war crimes against Serbian civilians in 1991.

In early August, the War Crimes Prosecution in Belgrade filed an indictment against Fehir – a move that experts on the case consider unusual, as is the silence of Zagreb officials about it.

As a minor, Krunoslav Fehir was a member of Branimir’s Osijek Battalion – a formation that was directly subordinate to Glavaš, one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and, at the time, the de facto most powerful man in the Osijek area, in eastern Croatia.

Gllavash was sentenced to seven years in prison by a first-instance verdict, while the final decision must be made by the Supreme Court of Croatia.

In mid-June of this year, Serbian police arrested Fehir upon entering Serbia and he has been held in custody in the Belgrade Central Prison ever since.

According to his lawyer, Bojan Stanojlovic, the Prosecution accuses Fehir of membership in a group that incited the commission of genocide and war crimes.

This is Article 145, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code from the time of the SFRY, which provides for a prison sentence of at least one year.

“Of course, he was surprised when they arrested him, because he had no idea he could be arrested for this… because since 1991 until today, the authorities in Serbia have not taken any action, nor has there been any indication that anything was happening,” Stanojlovic tells Radio Free Europe.

Journalist and writer Drago Hedl, who was the first to write about the war crimes for which Branimir Glavaš was responsible, tells REL that he is surprised by the decision of the judicial authorities in Serbia to initiate proceedings against the man who was most responsible for uncovering crimes against Serbian civilians in Osijek.

“One of my acquaintances, with whom I spoke about the case, told me that Serbia should give that man a decoration, because he was the person who uncovered very serious war crimes against members of the Serbian national minority in Croatia,” says Hedl.

Witness to the crime

In 1991, at the insistence of his father, 16-year-old Krunoslav Fehir became a member of the National Guard Corps (ZNG), the predecessor of the Croatian Army. The Branimir Osijek Battalion formation operated within the Corps. This formation answered directly to Branimir Glavaš.

“Croatia did not have its own army in the former Yugoslavia, so after the breakup of Yugoslavia and on the eve of the war in 1991, the ZNG was formed. It consisted of young people, recruits who later received uniforms and weapons. Among them was Krunoslav Fehir, who was a minor at the time,” explains Hedl.

In the early 2000s, Gllavaš, along with a group of ZNG members, were charged with war crimes against Serbian civilians in 1991 and 1992.

The indictment included two cases: the murder of seven mostly Serb civilians on the banks of the Drava River and the murder of Čedomir Vučković and Đorđe Petrović, civilians of Serbian nationality, in the garage of the Defense Secretariat, which was run by Gllavash.

Fehir in poor health

Krunoslav Fehir is in poor health and the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia has asked Serbian judicial authorities to allow him to undergo medical examinations in Belgrade, the Croatian diplomatic mission told Radio Free Europe.

According to him, so far, there has been no response to this request.

This is also confirmed by Fehir’s lawyer, Stanojlovic.

He says he has sent several urgent requests for his client to undergo diagnostic examinations.

“Krunoslav Fehir has serious health problems and our current priority is to organize a medical examination, in order to fulfill the prerequisites for the trial,” says Stanojlovic.

According to the facts proven by the court, Čedomir Vučković was forced to drink sulfuric acid from an accumulator by one of the members of Branimir’s Osijek battalion.

In terrible pain, the unfortunate man managed to break the garage door.

Fehir, at that moment, was securing the entrance to the garage.

When he saw Vučković, Fehir, according to his own admission, shot and wounded him in the abdomen and right arm.

Hedl says that an autopsy performed the next day showed that Vuckovic died from the effects of sulfuric acid poisoning.

Fehir, who became a police officer after the war, spoke in detail about the crime to the Split-based newspaper Feral Tribune, for which Hedl was writing at the time.

In his testimony for “Feral” in 2005, Fehir, among other things, said:

“These two people were, in fact, mistreated the whole time. I know they were also beaten with baseball bats. Later, as the day was coming to an end, they said they were going to force them to drink the acid that was in the garage. I couldn’t believe what they were talking about, and later I saw that in the same garage there were some discarded batteries, which were used or not ours. I know that one of them was forced to drink acid. After that, around 9:00-9:15, one of these two people hit the door from the inside… another hit was heard and the door broke, and he came out.”

Fehir also said that Vuckovic was then shot, while Djordje Petkovic, who saw everything and stayed in the garage, was later killed.

His testimony initially initiated the investigation, and then the trial against Branimir Gllavashi, which has not ended even after two decades.

Fehir was given the status of key witness, which in one of the subsequent proceedings was removed for procedural reasons, but his testimony remained valid.

“Now he is the person against whom the Serbian judicial system has turned, under circumstances that are unclear to me – especially considering that Krunoslav Fehir, from the end of the war until the time he was arrested, visited Serbia several times and no one ever asked him about anything,” says Hedl.

What does the prosecution (not) charge Fehir with?

Stanojlovic, legal representative of Krunoslav Fehir, explains that his client is not suspected of the murder of Cedomir Vuckovic.

“Our prosecution does not have any information from those cases. The prosecution receives information from some newspaper headlines, from Krunoslav Fehir’s previous statements in the media and from his statements before the public prosecutor during the investigation phase,” says Stanojlovic.

He points out that, before he was granted the status of key witness, criminal proceedings were conducted against Fehir for the death of Čedomir Vučković, but that they were discontinued, meaning that he cannot be tried again for that crime.

Stanojlovic adds that the prosecution’s accusation that Fehir was a member of a group that incited the commission of genocide and war crimes is refuted by the fact that he was a minor at the time.

“He was sent there and it is questionable whether he knew what he was doing in those years. Also, the conventions deprive him of the opportunity to be charged with war crimes at that age,” says Stanojlovic.

Zoran Pusic, leader of the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia and a human rights activist for decades, tells Radio Free Europe that the proceedings against Krunoslav Fehir are a great injustice and a political farce.

“Fehir suffered in Croatia as well. Because of his testimony, he only got into trouble. His testimony made the most difficult trial in Croatia possible. The event would never have turned into a trial if it weren’t for his testimony,” says Pusic.

Reactions in Croatia

Fehir was arrested on June 15, when he entered Serbia. The circumstances in which he was arrested, Pusic describes as highly unusual.

“He is a retired policeman and started working as a taxi driver. A man asked him to drive him to the border with Serbia, telling him that someone would meet him there. At the border, the man told him that his friend could not come, so he asked Fehir to drive him across the border. As soon as he drove him across the border, the police arrested him and took him to Belgrade,” says Pusic.

Immediately after the arrest, Belgrade tabloids – close to the regime – reported that a “monstrous criminal” and “murderer of Serbs” had been arrested.

There was no official reaction from Zagreb.

The Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic did not comment on the matter.

Not even veterans’ associations, which often speak out on issues outside their competence.

“The impression is created that many politicians would prefer that Fehir disappear into prison, because he ruins their image of the innocence of the Patriotic War,” says Pusic.

However, Gllavash himself declared that, due to Fehir’s testimony, he expects a final verdict for war crimes.

He placed himself “at the disposal of the judicial system of the Republic of Serbia”, with guarantees of free return to Croatia.

“I remind the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Serbia that the expertise was conducted by the world-renowned expert, Dr. Gjorge Allempijevic, where it clearly appears that KF killed Čedomir Vučković,” said Glavas.

Hedl says that Glavas hired Belgrade forensic expert Đorđe Allempijević, who, a quarter of a century after the crime in the garage of the Defense Secretariat in Osijek, questioned the autopsy report that Čedomir Vučković died from drinking sulfuric acid.

“He claims that there is a possibility that Cedomir Vuckovic died from the wounds inflicted by Fehir. These are things that go in Glavash’s favor,” says Hedl.

Ever since Fehir spoke publicly about the case known as “The Garage,” Glavas has consistently insisted that this is a lie and that Fehir was responsible for the murder of Cedomir Vuckovic.

Glavash filed a criminal complaint against Fehir for the murder of Vučković, but it was dropped in October 2021, on the grounds that Glavash’s accusations were unfounded.

“Glavash hates Fehir because his trial and that of the other perpetrators was made possible because of his testimony,” says Pusic.

He adds that the trial against Fehir in Belgrade should not affect the decision against Glavash.

Trial for decades

This is the second time that Branimir Gllavaš and his group have been tried in a trial, which initially began in 2005.

In the first trial, Gllavash was sentenced to eight years in prison, in 2010.

Before his sentence was handed down, Glavash fled to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where his dual citizenship protected him from extradition to Croatia, and served just over five years in prison in Mostar.

The Constitutional Court of Croatia overturned that decision in 2015, on procedural grounds.

The new trial first began in 2017, and then again – after the indictment was amended due to the deaths of two defendants – in October 2021.

In the first instance decision of 2023, in addition to Gllavash, Gordana Getosh Magdić, former commander of a platoon of a special unit for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes in the Osijek Operational Zone, was also sentenced to four years in prison, while members of that platoon, Dino Kontić and Zdravko Dragić, were sentenced to three years each.