Naturalized Australian Dragan Vasliljković, aka Kapetan Dragan, wanted by Croatian authorities for war crimes, committed the crime of torture, an Australian court has ruled, dismissing Vasiljkovic's defamation claim against the Australian publisher Nationwide News, the Australian daily The Age reported on its web site on Saturday
New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Megan Latham yesterday said evidence of three "truthful and reliable witnesses" had established that Vasiljkovic "committed torture and the war crime of torture," the newspaper reported. Justice Latham also accepted that a Bosnian woman who testified in a Sydney court had correctly identified Vasiljkovic as the person who allegedly repeatedly raped her in a hotel in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. The judge thus dismissed Vasiljkovic's defamation claim against Nationwide News, which also publishes The Australian daily. "In an unusual legal move, Justice Latham has effectively ruled on the veracity of key witnesses' testimony about Vasiljkovic's wartime activities before a Croatian criminal court has a chance to do so," The Age said. "The systematic abuse, humiliation and deprivation visited upon those whom the plaintiff (Vasiljkovic) sought to punish and subdue ... was consistent with the plaintiff's stated aim to drive out non-Serbs from the Krajina (region of Croatia)," The Age quoted Justice Latham as saying. It also reported that outside court, Vasiljkovic labelled the judgment as a disgrace and the witnesses as liars, announcing his appeal. In a separate court case, Croatia sought the extradition of the former commander of Serb paramilitaries aka Captain Dragan. Vasiljkovic was arrested in Sydney on 20 January 2006 as an Australian citizen under the name Daniel Snedden on an international warrant issued by Croatia. Last February, the Australian Federal Court rejected Vasiljkovic's appeal against a New South Wales court decision from 2007 which established that there were no obstacles to his extradition to Croatia. But in September, the Federal Court upheld Vasiljkovic's appeal against the extradition decision, concluding that it had grounds to believe that in Croatia, Vasiljkovic could be punished or imprisoned because of his ethnicity or political views. After that, Croatia sought leave from the Australian High Court to appeal the decision preventing Vasiljkovic's extradition.
