A Croatian court convicted an opposition lawmaker of war crimes on Friday, but he vowed in a video statement to avoid imprisonment.
Branimir Glavas is Croatia’s first senior politician to be held responsible for atrocities committed during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war. As a legislator, however, he has parliamentary immunity, and was not required to attend court proceedings.
The Zagrab court sentenced him on Friday to 10 years and asked parliament to lift his immunity so he could be arrested to serve his time in prison. The earliest the chamber might vote on the issue would be next week. Glavas’ lawyer Drazen Matijevic said he would appeal the ruling.
Glavas released a video statement saying he “won’t give them the satisfaction” of arresting him — amid media speculation that he has fled the country. He had been detained when the trial opened several years ago, but was released in 2007 when he was elected to parliament.
During the 1991 war, Glavas was a member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union and formed a paramilitary unit in eastern Croatian town of Osijek, where he was seen as a warlord.
Judge Zeljko Horvatovic said Glavas ordered the detention, torture and killing of six Serb civilians, whose bodies were dumped in a river.
Glavas also failed to prevent the killings of two other Serbs, one of whom had been forced to drink battery acid before being sprayed with bullets, the judge said.
Five members of the Osijek paramilitary unit were also convicted and sentenced to prison terms of five to eight years.
Glavas has denied committing crimes, saying he only defended his town during the six-month war that started when Croatian Serbs took up arms to rebel against the country’s independence from Yugoslavia.
Thousands of Croats were killed by Serb rebels, but Croats also committed crimes against Serbs.
Croatia had long refused to try its own for war crimes, insisting Serbs were the sole perpetrators of atrocities. But as the country moves to adopt Western standards in hopes of joining the EU by 2011, it has started prosecuting Croatians along with Serbs.
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