The Croatian prosecution has started its investigations into a former member of the Scorpions, a Serbian paramilitary unit, after receiving the case from Serbia.
The Osijek county prosecution announced on Friday that it had started an investigation involving a former member of the Scorpions, Milorad Momic, who is suspected of committing war crimes in the village of Trnovo in Bosnia in 1995.
The Serbian prosecution believes that he may have helped with the killing of six Bosniaks and the burning of their bodies.
The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes transferred the case to Croatia, on the basis of the Law on International Legal Aids in Criminal Matters, as Momic is already on trial for war crimes in Osijek, Croatia.
When the wars which had seen the breakup of the former Yugoslavia ended, Momic escaped to France where he lived under the assumed name of Guy Monie.
He was arrested in 2011, on an Interpol arrest warrant and extradited to Croatia to face charges of torturing three Croatian civilians and killing another in an improvised concentration camp in September 1991.
In 2008, Serbia’s Supreme Court sentenced three Serb paramilitaries, all members of the Scorpions, for the same crimes for which Momic is currently being investigated.
The crucial evidence in that trial was the video footage of the 1995 execution of six young Bosniaks filmed by the perpetrators. The footage was originally shown at the trial of the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague Tribunal.
The victims were from the UN protected enclave of Srebrenica, which was overrun by Bosnian Serbs forces. The Bosnian Serbs went on to kill over 7,000 Bosniak men and boys at different locations.
The footage showed the Scorpions taking the six young Bosnian Muslims, who had their hands tied behind their backs, from a truck in the village of Trnovo some 150 kilometres from Srebrenica, and then lining them up on a hillside.
They shot four of the men immediately, and then made the remaining two men carry the bodies into a barn, where they too were killed.
Although the actual executions are not shown, some viewers might find the footage below disturbing.