Republic of Serbian Krajina

A retired Serbian State Security Service officer told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that he met the defendants in November 1994 on Petrova Gora mountain in Croatia, which at that time was part of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina established by rebel Croatian Serbs.

A defence witness at former Serbian Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic's retrial said he knew Serbian paramilitary units were operating in Croatia in 1991 but didn't know about crimes they committed.

Defence witness Nebojsa Bogunovic, who was a police official in the Serbian town of Backa Palanka, told the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that he volunteered to go to the Eastern Slavonia region of Croatia in the summer of 1991 as the conflict there was developing.

A defence witness in the war crimes retrial of former Serbian state security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic said on Tuesday that the State Security Service, SDB, that they led was not involved in establishing a training camp in a Serb breakaway statelet in Croatia in 1991.

Croatian Ombudsperson Lora Vidovic on Tuesday said that if police failed to initiate legal action against former members of a paramilitary unit, who on Monday celebrated the anniversary of Operation Storm by chanting the Fascist slogan "Za dom spremni", it will be a blatant violation of the legal order.

Human rights groups in Serbia and Croatia have called on authorities in both countries to do more to recognise and aid victims of a 1995 Croatian military operation that ended the country's war against rebel Serbs.

Croatia on Monday marked the 24th anniversary of Operation Storm, a military blitz that quashed a breakaway Serb statelet but put to flight almost 200,000 Serb civilians.

On August 5, Croatia marks its Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian Defenders with an annual celebration in the southern town of Knin.

The Croatian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a Dutch citizen who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in absentia for war crimes in 1991 has been extradited to Zagreb.

The ministry only gave his initials and year of birth, but local media reported that the man was 53-year-old Milorad Barac.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution asked for a total of 59 years in prison for eight Serb ex-fighters accused of killing Croatian civilians in the village of Lovas in 1991.

A court in Osijek has begun the retrial of Serbian citizen Djordje Rkman, who is accused of committing war crimes against civilians in the eastern Croatian town of Djakovo in 1991 and 1992.