Vulin: Had Croatia Tried its Pilots, Serbia Wouldn’t Be Seeking To Do It  

Aleksandar Vulin( BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV/MO)

Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin on May 24 said that Serbia would not be seeking to try Croatian pilots for the murder of women and children during Croatian military and police Operation Storm in 1995, had Croatia tried them.

“I know that it is not easy to expect the state, which was created on the idea that it is allowed and desirable to kill Serbs, to put on trial someone for murdering Serbs, but it must be expected from an EU member state, because hope dies last,” Vulin said in a release.

Vulin added that Croatian military and police Operation Storm had been declared war crime also by a ruling of the Hague Tribunal, “but they have somehow failed to find, name and sentence those who committed crimes,” noting that Serbia would do it instead.

According to unofficial information, the Serbian Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor, has filed an indictment against four retired Croatian Army officers, fighter pilots, for alleged war crimes against Serb civilians during Operation Storm in August 1995. They are charged for allegedly ordering the shelling of a column of refugees near Bosanski Petrovac and Bosanski Novi (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

Croatian officials believe that Serbia has no right to bring charges against Croatian nationals and that Serbia has “self-proclaimed” its jurisdiction based on the Law on organization and competence of government authorities in war crimes proceedings, with which Belgrade “has been persistently trying to act as the boss in someone else’s backyard.”