Croatia Ordered to Compensate Missing Serb’s Family

Zagreb municipal court ruled that Croatia must pay 78,400 euro in compensation to the family of a Serb who went missing and was found dead after being seized by Croatian forces in 1991, media reported.

The court told the state to compensate the family of Dragan Miocinovic, a Croatian Serb mechanic with the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, who went missing in September 1991 in the town of Sisak in central Croatia, newspaper Vecernji list reported on Tuesday.

Along with two other JNA soldiers, Miocinovic was taken into custody by Croatian police and the Croatian National Guard (the predecessor of the Croatian army). The two soldiers were put in a local prison, while Miocinovic was not seen alive again and his body was found a month later in the Sava river in Macvanska Mitrovica in Serbia.

It was never proved who was responsible for his death, but his wife claimed in court that it was Croatian forces. She and his two sons only found out that he had died 15 years afterwards.

Miocinovic was also mentioned during the trial of the former commander of the Sisak police, Vladimir Milankovic, and a member of a special police unit, Drago Bosnjak, for war crimes in Sisak between mid-July 1991 and mid-June 1992.

During the trial, one witness testified that he saw Miocinovic at the police station. He said that the official version of Miocinovic’s disappearance was that he escaped, but rumours suggested that he was hit by a rock and thrown into the river.

Bosnjak was acquitted, while Milankovic was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Croatian supreme court in June 2014.