Police on Friday night arrested a Croatian national and took him to the Vukovar County Court Investigating Centre and pressed charges against three Croatian nationals and one person of unknown citizenship on the suspicion that they committed a war crime against seven wounded and captured members of Croatian special police forces from Vinkovci in the prewar eastern community of Borovo Selo, now called Borovo, on 2 May 1991, police officials and prosecutors said at a news conference in Vinkovci on Saturday.
The police have issued warrants for the arrest of the four people against whom charges have been pressed because they are beyond the reach of police and are currently not in Croatia, the head of the national crime police department, Vitomir Bijelic, said.
The police in 2006 issued an international warrant for the arrest of one of the four people who are beyond the reach of police because the person in question had been sentenced to six years in prison for a war crime against civilians and prisoners of war in Vukovar County. The police in 2008 issued an arrest warrant for another one of the four persons on the suspicion that that person committed a war crime against civilians in Osijek County.
Bijelic said that in the last few months the police had interviewed 28 witnesses and conducted 252 interviews as part of the investigation into the war crime against prisoners of war in Borovo, and that on Thursday they arrested five people, of whom four were later released and one was placed in custody and taken to the Vukovar County Court Investigating Centre.
Vukovar County Prosecutor Bozidar Piljic said that the arrested person was placed in custody for 48 hours after the questioning.
Piljic recalled that 12 members of the Vinkovci Special Police Unit were killed and 24 were wounded in an ambush in Borovo on 2 May 1991. A trial for the murder of the 12 police officers was conducted before the Osijek Military Court after the 1991-1995 Homeland War, and ten people were handed down final court verdicts in the case.
"However, the Amnesty Act was adopted in 1996 and the perpetrators of that crime cannot be put on trial again," Piljic said, adding that it was only possible to put on trial the perpetrators of the war crime against the seven Croatian police officers who had been captured and tortured in Borovo.
Deputy Police Director Milijan Brkic said that by conducting investigations regarding the prosecution of the Borovo war crime, the police were sending a clear message to the victims' families that they had not been forgotten and that no war crimes case, regardless of the time of its commission, had been put aside.
The 12 members of the Special Police Unit from Vinkovci were killed in the Borovo ambush on 2 May 1991 when they came there to rescue two of their colleagues who had been taken prisoner by Croatian Serb paramilitaries during a regular patrol in the night between 1 and 2 May. Twenty-four Croatian police were wounded in the ambush, and seven of them were captured and tortured.
Reporters attending today's news conference were also shown rifles, handguns, knives and parts of military uniforms of Croatian Serb rebel forces found during searches of the suspects' homes.
