Croatia Acquits Serb Ex-Fighter of Killing Married Couple

Zagreb County Court on Monday acquitted former Serb fighter Slobodan Mutic of killing two Croatian civilians, Stjepan and Paula Cindric, during the war in 1992 in the town of Petrinja.

Another former Serb fighter, Dragan Perencevic, who was tried in absentia for the same crime, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Mutic, who was a soldier of the unrecognised Serb-led Republic of Serbian Krajina rebel statelet in the 1990s, was extradited to Croatia from the United States at the beginning of 2018.

The US had already sentenced Mutic to two years in prison in January 2016 for lying during his visa approval process in 1999.

Mutic was charged, together with Perencevic, of killing the married couple in 1992 in the town of Petrinja in central Croatia, which at that time was under Serb control.

According to the indictment, Perencevic and Mutic broke into the house of the Cindric family in Petrinja and then drove them to the village of Josavica by car, where they fired several shots at them which killed them on the spot.

The trial chamber found that Perencevic participated in the murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence, but that the evidence was not enough to convict Mutic.

The main evidence against Perencevic, who now lives in Serbia and he is inaccessible to the Croatian judiciary, were the shells found at the murder site, which, according to expert reports, were fired from his weapon.

Under the same verdict, Perencevic was also found guilty of killing three members of the Krizevic family in Petrinja in December 1991.

Monday's first-instance verdict can be appealed, and Sisak County's deputy state's attorney, Sanja Jagust, has announced a challenge to the acquittal part of the verdict.

Klaudio Curin, the...