The Osijek County Office of the Chief State Prosecutor on Wednesday filed motions for launching an investigation into Djuro Brodarac, Vlado Milankovic and Drago Bosnjak, suspected of war crimes against civilians in Sisak in 1991 and 1992, and for remanding them in custody, citing the possibility of their interference in the investigation and the gravity of the crimes they are suspected of.
The prosecutorial authorities issued a press release on those motions on their website without disclosing the identity of the three men.
On Tuesday, the Osijek County Court's investigating judge set a 24-hour detention for Brodarac, Milankovic and Bosnjak, after they were arrested by the police the day before.
The investigation into war crimes in the area of Sisak has been in the jurisdiction of the Osijek County Prosecutor's Office since September 2010. A decision to that effect was made by Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic.
Brodarac, 67, who was the head of the Sisak police department and a high local official in charge of organising the defence of the Sisak and Banovina area against the aggression launched by the Yugoslav People Army (JNA) and Serb rebels, is suspected of having failed to prevent his subordinates from unlawfully raiding houses of local Serbs and from unlawfully arresting and detaining local Serbs in makeshift prisons. In those makeshift jails, 69 civilians were tortured and 31 of them died in the period form July 1991 to June 1992, according to the prosecutorial authorities.
Brodarac is suspected of having ordered some of those unlawful arrests and of having been engaged in the maltreatment of Serbs.
The 49-year-old Vlado Milankovic, a former commander of the Sisak police department's active and reserve units, is also suspected of having failed to prevent unlawful arrests and detention of local Serbs and of having participated in their physical and mental abuse.
Bosnjak, 53, is suspected of having organised a group of soldiers in contravention of the international war and humanitarian laws and of having unlawfully apprehended, tortured and murdered people of Serb descent. He is held responsible for the death of eight of those 31 victims.
