Three Croatian non-governmental organisations issued a joint statement on Friday in protest at the decision by the Justice Ministry Parole Board to release former general Mirko Norac after he had served over two thirds of his 15-year prison term for war crimes.
The organisations Documenta, the Centre for Peace, Non-Violence and Human Rights, and the Civil Committee on Human Rights said it was wrong to apply the two-thirds clause to war crimes.
The NGOs said that the Parole Board should think of the sentence from the trial-court judgement saying that Norac "failed to show respect for those killed and sympathy to those who lost their loved ones." They recalled that Norac failed to express regret over the killing of Serb civilians in Gospic and his omission to punish those responsible for the murder of civilians and prisoners of war in the Medak Pocket.
"He did not even express remorse for personally killing an unidentified woman at an execution site near Gospic," the statement said.
The NGOs believe that the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office should launch an investigation to identify the direct perpetrators of serious war crimes for which Norac was convicted on command responsibility, including arson, murder, torture, maltreatment and humiliation of civilians and prisoners of war, to investigate the responsibility of envoys of the Croatian Army General Staff, identify those responsible for war crimes committed in the area covered by the special police, and determine command responsibility for those crimes.
The Parole Board made its decision on Thursday, and Norac's lawyer Vlatko Nuic said he expected his client to be released from the Lipovica penitentiary in late November. Norac is to serve the remainder of his sentence under conditions to be specified in the Parole Board's decision.
Norac has been in prison since March 2001. He was first sentenced to 12 years in prison for war crimes in the Gospic area, and later to six years' imprisonment for war crimes in the Medak Pocket. When the second verdict became final, the Supreme Court joined the two sentences into a single prison term of 15 years. Norac applied for parole in early May, and before that he had asked that his sentence be reduced, on which the Supreme Court has not decided yet.
President Ivo Josipovic, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, stripped Norac of his rank in September 2010. He did the same in the case of Branimir Glavas and Vladimir Zagorec.
