Timeline Croatia
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Bordered by Slovenia, Hungary,
Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia, Croatia is slightly smaller than
Ireland and West Virginia. It has a varied landscape, ranging from
lush valleys and fields in the east to forests in its interior and a
long Adriatic Sea coastline dotted with hundreds of islands.
The capital is Zagreb with a population of 1 million.
Main ethnic minorities are Serbs, Italians and Hungarians.
Average monthly wage is $625.
(AP, 6/23/03)
In 2004 Earth’s deepest know hole, 1,693 feet, was found in the
Velebit Mountains of Croatia.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A6)
26000BC-27000BC Neanderthals
lived in Croatia. Their remains were later found at the Vindija cave
and dated to this time in 1999 with accelerator radiocarbon dating.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.B3)
295 Diocletian (245-316), Roman
Emperor (284-305), began construction of a fortified palace near the
village of his birth. It later became the historic downtown of
Split, Croatia. Construction took 10 years.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D10)
316 Diocletian (b.245) died at
his retirement palace near his birthplace in Dalmatia (Croatia).
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D10)
614 Croats settled in the area
between the Adriatic Sea and the rivers Sava and Drava.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
791 Croats about this time
established the principalities of Primortska Hrvatska on the
Adriatic coast and Posavska Hrvatska in inland Croatia.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
925 The Croatian kingdom was
established. King Tomislav was crowned first king of Croatia by
decree of the Holy Catholic Church in Rome, and was its founder. He
disappeared in 928 A.D. at the time of ominous discord between the
Croatian Catholic Church and the Latin Catholic Church. The discord
was over which Catholic Church should be the only, and legal Church
in Croatia. It is not known to this day, where King Tomislav was
buried or how he died.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
http://www.croatian-king-tomislav.com/
1102 Croats were forced to
enter into a union with Hungary and to recognize the Hungarian king
as their own.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
1186 Zara (present-day Zadar,
Croatia), previously part of the Venetian republic, rebelled against
Venice and allied itself with Hungary, posing competition to
Venice’s maritime trade.
(HNQ, 1/23/01)
1202 Nov, The Fourth Crusade
sacked Zara. The leaders of the Fourth Crusade agreed to sack Zara
(present-day Zadar, Croatia), a rival of Venice, as payment for
transportation the Venetians supplied the crusaders. Zara,
previously part of the Venetian republic, posed competition to
Venice’s maritime trade. Unable to raise enough funds to pay to
their Venetian contractors, the crusaders agreed to lay siege to the
city despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding such an
action and threatening excommunication. The fleet set sail in
October of 1202, reaching Zara in Nov. Zara, the first Christian
city to be assaulted by crusaders, surrendered after just two weeks.
The army then wintered in the city and planned an attack on the
Byzantine capital of Constantinople the following year.
(HNQ, 1/23/01)
1389 Serbs, defeated by the
Ottoman Turks, moved from Kosovo to the Krajina region of Croatia.
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A12)
1490 Apr 6, Matthias Corvinus
(b.1443), king of Hungary and Croatia (1458-1590), died. He has
assembled one of Europe’s finest libraries, 2nd in size only to that
in the Vatican. When Hungary later fell to the Turks the library was
lost. In 2008 Marcus Tanner authored “The Raven King: Matthias
Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library.”
(Econ, 7/19/08,
p.93)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus_of_Hungary)
1527 Croatia formed a state
union with Austria.
(WSJ, 7/14/99, p.A23)
1671 Apr 30, Peter Zrinyi (49),
Hungarian banished to Croatia, was beheaded.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1699 Jan 26, The Treaty of
Karlowitz, Croatia, ended the war between Austria and the Turks.
(HN,
1/26/99)(www.san.beck.org/1-10-Ottoman1300-1730.html)
1809 Jul 5-1809 Jul 6, Napoleon
beat Austria’s archduke Charles at the Battle of Wagram. He annexed
the Illyrian Provinces (now part of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal
States.
(http://tinyurl.com/vx8dk)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wagram)
1819 Apr 18, Franz von Suppa,
composer (Light Cavalry Overture), was born in Spalato, Dalmatia
(Croatia).
(MC, 4/18/02)
1853 The Croatian lighthouse
Sveti Ivan Na Pucini was built on the northern Adriatic Sea.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D9)
1856 Jul 9, Nikola Tesla,
electrical engineer, inventor (Tesla Coil), was born in Croatia.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1857 The San Francisco Slavonic
Mutual and Benevolent Society, the oldest Croatian society in the
US, was founded.
(SFC, 2/17/05, p.E3)
1869 The Benedictine monastery
on the Croatian island of Sveta Marija was abandoned.
(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D8)
1900 Mar 9, Aimone, duke of
Spoleta-Aosta, Italian king of Croatia (1941-43), was born.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1902 Sep 1, The
Austro-Hungarian army was called into the city of Agram to restore
the peace as Serbs and Croats clashed.
(HN, 9/1/99)
1915 May 12, Croatians
plundered Armenia and killed 250.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1906 May 17, Opera singer Zinka
Milanov was born in Zagreb, Croatia.
(AP, 5/17/06)
1917 Jul 20, The Pact of
Corfu was signed between the Serbs, Croats & Slovenes to form
Yugoslavia. [see Dec 1, 1918]
(www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1917yugoslavia1.html)
1918 Oct 29-1918 Oct 31, The
Kingdom of Greater Serbia was proclaimed at Sarajevo in Bosnia
bringing that state into what was later called Yugoslavia. [see Dec
1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 7, The Yugoslav
National Conference at Geneva decided on the union of Croatia and
Slovenia with Serbia and Montenegro. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 24, Another
proclamation took place of the United Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Nov 26, Montenegro deposed
its king who opposed union and voted to join the new Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. [see Dec 1]
(BWH, 1988)
1918 Dec 1, The Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes [later in 1929 to be called Yugoslavia]
was proclaimed by Alexander Karadjordjevic, the son of King Peter of
Serbia. It included the previously independent kingdoms of Serbia
and Macedonia, the Hungarian-controlled regions of Croatia and
Slovenia, the Austrian province of Dalmatia, Carniola and parts of
Styria, Carinthia and Istria. King Alexander I renamed the Balkan
state called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to
Yugoslavia in 1929.
(AP, 10/3/97)(HNQ,
3/26/99)(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/map/yugoslavia/1900/)
1919 Oct 3, The Serbian,
Croatian & Slavic (Yugoslavia) parliament agreed on an 8 hr work
day.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1920 Jun 4, The Treaty of
Trianon, signed at Versailles, was forced upon Hungary by the
victorious Allies after WWII and resulted in Hungary giving up
nearly three-fourths of its territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia and
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croat and Slovenes. Hungary lost more than
half its population, including some 3 million Hungarians. Hungary
ceded the hills of Transylvania to Romania.
(HNQ, 7/5/98)(WSJ, 1/2/97,
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon)
1920 Oct 10, The Carinthian
Plebiscite determined the border between Austria and the newly
formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carinthian_Plebiscite)
1922 May 14, Franjo Tudjman
(d.1999), later president, was born in Veliko Trgovisce.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1927 Oct 28, Josip Broz (Tito)
began a 7 months jail sentence in Croatia.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1928 Ivan Merz (32),
Bosnian-Croat intellectual and theologian, died of meningitis. He
was beatified in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.
(AP, 6/22/03)
1929 Oct 3, The Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formally changed its name to the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia. King Alexander I renamed the Balkan state called the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Yugoslavia. The Kingdom had
been formed on December 1, 1918 and was ruled by the Serbian
Karageorgevic dynasty. It included the previously independent
kingdoms of Serbia and Macedonia, the Hungarian-controlled regions
of Croatia and Slovenia, the Austrian province of Dalmatia, Carniola
and parts of Styria, Carinthia and Istria.
(AP, 10/3/97)(HN, 10/3/98)(HNQ, 3/26/99)
1941 Jun 4, Republic of Croatia
ordered all Jews to wear a star with the letter Z.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia
and Ante Pavelic led a pro-Nazi dictatorship that controlled
newly-independent Croatia. Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb,
initially embraced the Pavelic government.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1941 Andrija Artukovic was
named the Minister of the Interior in the newly-formed NDH. He was
closely involved in the mass murder of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and
other minorities, and the opening of concentration camps such as
Jasenovac. His close associate was propagandist Savić Marković
Štedimlija, a publicist of Montenegrin descent.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artukovi%C4%87)
1941-1945 Croatia was occupied by Nazi forces and
with its Moslem allies some 700,000 Serbs and 75,000 Jews and
Gypsies were killed. [This was a letter with reference to the
Encyclopedia Britannica as source material] The Independent State of
Croatia was set up after the German and Italian invasions and run by
the fascist Ustashe regime as a puppet state. The central Ustashe
aim was to cleanse Croatia of “foreign” elements and to turn Croatia
into a "100% Roman Catholic state." Jasenovac was the site of the
largest Ustashe death camp, and some estimates claim as many as
several hundred thousand dead. Ante Pavelic was the leader of the
Ustashe regime.
(WSJ, 10/11/95, p. A-1)(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A-22)(WSJ,
5/20/99, p.A21)
1941-1945 The Herzegovina region of Bosnia became
a stronghold of the Croatian Ustashe movement allied to the Nazis.
Local clergy was seen condoning and supporting Ustashe mass slayings
of ethnic Serbs. One in six of Croatia's prewar population died.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A18)
1942-1944 The Jasenovac concentration camp
southeast of Zagreb was commanded by Capt. Dinko Sakic for 8 months.
Croatia extradited him from Argentina in 1998. Sakic commanded the
Stara Gradiska concentration camp and was deputy commander of the
Jasenovac camp. Sakic was found guilty in 1999 of carrying out or
condoning the torture and slaying of inmates.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/17/98, p.C2)(SFC,
11/3/98, p.C12)(SFC, 3/16/99, p.A9)(SFC, 10/5/99, p.A12)
1943 May 18, Archbishop
Stepinac urged Pius XII to take a firm position to hold on "to its
240,000 converts." Eastern Orthodox practitioners had converted to
Catholicism to escape death camps.
(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A21)
1944 Apr-1944 Nov, Dinko Sakic
(22) ran the Jasenovac concentration camp. In 1998 he was indicted
for crimes against humanity in the deaths of over 2,000 people 6
months after being extradited from Argentina.
(SFC, 12/15/98, p.A17)
1944 Oct, At the Jasenovac camp
the "autumn liquidation" began under Dinko Sakic. For 20 days the
old and sick were killed and thrown into the Sava River.
(SFC, 3/23/99, p.A10)
1945 Apr 22, In Croatia as
Ustashe were killing fast before closing down the Jasenovac camp, 87
inmates escaped. 1000 others were recaptured or shot and killed
while fleeing. Brother Satan, who took part in a World War II
massacre of 2,000 Serbs by Ustashe troops and whose real name was
Tomislav Filipovic Majstorovic, was defrocked in 1943 but stayed on
in the camp, known as "Auschwitz of the Balkans," where he was said
to have killed freely. Independent historians put the number of
victims executed there at between 80,000 and 100,000.
(SFC, 3/23/99, p.A10)(AP, 4/24/05)
1945 May-1945 Jun, The graves
of some 1,000 Croatian soldiers killed at this time were found in
1999 near Maribor in eastern Slovenia. Another 6-7,000 bodies were
believed to be buried in the area. Slovenia, which during the war
was occupied by Italy and Germany, became a killing field, as
thousands in the newly formed Yugoslavia, including Germans,
Italians, Hungarians, Croatians, and Serbs, tried to escape to
Austria. The Slovene government began listing "concealed graves" in
2003. By 2010 officials had a list of about 600 suspected graves, at
least one in each community, amounting to perhaps 100,000 bodies.
(SFC, 6/17/99, p.C3)(AP, 11/15/10)
1945 Some 13,000 pro-Nazi
soldiers and civilians were executed as the WWIII ended. In 2009
Croatia asked that charges be brought against Simo Dubajic (86), a
former major in the Yugoslav army, on suspicion of ordering the
executions.
(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A2)
1945 A secret internal US
Treasury Dept. document, hidden for 50 years, revealed in 1997 that
the Vatican held some 200 million Swiss francs plundered from Serbs
and Jews by the Nazi puppet government of Croatia after WW II.
(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A8)
1946 Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac
(d.1960) was imprisoned by the Communists and sentenced to 16 years
of hard labor for his support of the Ustasha fascists. He was
declared a martyr in 1998 by Pope John Paul II.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.A8)
1951 Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac
was released under house arrest.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)
1972 Jan 26, A DC-9 exploded
over Serbska Kamenice, Czechoslovakia, and attendant Vesna Vulovic
dropped 33,300 feet and survived following a 27-day coma and a
16-month recovery. The cause of the explosion has never been
established, but was attributed by the Yugoslav and Czechoslovakian
authorities to a bomb placed on the plane by a Croatian Terrorist
group, known as the Ustasa.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, Z1
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic)
1974 Aug 30, In Yugoslavia an
express train, traveling from Belgrade to Germany, ran full speed
into a Zagreb, Croatia, rail yard killing 152.
(www.cmj.hr/2001/42/6/12.htm)(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)
1976 Sep 10, 5 Croatian
terrorists captured a TWA-plane at La Guardia Airport, NY.
(http://nycslav.blogspot.com/2005/11/croatian-terroristsin-new-york.html)
1980 May 4,
Marshal Josip Broz Tito (b.1892), Communist dictator of Yugoslavia
(1943-1980), died three days before his 88th birthday. He was a
Croat and tried to spread the Serbs out over the six Yugoslav
republics so that they would not dominate the country. His policy
was considered a major cause of the Bosnian war in the '90s.
(AP,
5/4/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito)(WSJ, 8/8/95,
p. A-10)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14).
1981 Young locals in
Medjugorje, Croatia, believed that the Virgin Mary was making
regular monthly appearances.
(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.W11)
1984 Radio 101, an 800 watt
station in Zagreb, became Croatia’s first commercial station.
(WSJ, 7/25/96, p.A1)
1988 Jan 16, Andrija Artukovic
(b.1899), a Croatian Ustasha and a convicted war criminal for
the crimes committed against minorities in the WWII Independent
State of Croatia (NDH), died in a prison hospital in Zagreb.
(SSFC, 4/4/10, Par.
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artukovi%C4%87)
1989 Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman
began airing his views on Radio 101.
(WSJ, 7/25/96, p.A1)
1989 Croatia’s Vis Island, an
off-limit army base for the former Yugoslavia, re-opened to the
public.
(SFC, 9/29/05, p.E4)
1989 Iraq sent 19 Soviet-built
MiG-21s and MiG-23s for maintenance to a plant in Zagreb, Croatia,
which was part Yugoslavia. They were moved to Serbia in 1991 and got
stuck there because of an embargo. Over the following years most
were cannibalized, abandoned and rendered useless.
(AP, 8/31/09)
1990 May, In Croatia Franjo
Tudjman was elected president in the first multiparty elections. He
led a party that advocated a Yugoslav confederation of sovereign
states.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1990 Sep 30, Serbs in Croatia
proclaimed autonomy.
(http://tinyurl.com/q8lrk)
1991 Jun 24, Croatia and
Slovenia voted to declare independence unless some new agreement was
reached among the Yugoslav republics.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Jun 25, The civil war in
Yugoslavia began when Croatia and Slovenia proclaimed independence
from Yugoslavia. Croatia voted to declare independence with Franjo
Tudjman as president. Following months of unsuccessful talks among
Yugoslavia’s six republics about the future of the federation, the
western republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their
independence. Entities of Yugoslavia began to split off leaving
Serbia and Montenegro.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(AP,
6/25/01)(www.factmonster.com/ce6/world/A0857636.html)
1991 Jun 27, Fighting broke out
between Serbian and Croatian militias. The Serbs were angered by
Tudjman's revival of Ustasha symbols to promote Croatian
nationalism.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC,
12/11/99, p.A16)
1991 Jul 27, Fighting escalated
in the breakaway republic of Croatia, as a Yugoslav air force jet
fired on Croatian forces and ground fighting erupted into clashes
with federal tanks and troops.
(AP, 7/27/01)
1991 Aug 2, Blaine Harden of
the Washington Post wrote that the Serbian aim “is obviously ethnic
cleansing of the critical areas that are to be annexed to Serbia.”
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Aug, Serbian tanks and
aircraft drove refugees from 3 Croatian towns.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1991 Sep 21, Yugoslav army
tanks and artillery began an invasion of eastern Croatia. The Croats
said that some 600 soldiers and 1200 civilians perished in the
3-month bombardment of Vukovar by rebel Serbs.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)
1991 Sep 25, The UN Security
Council unanimously passed Resolution 713 that imposed a worldwide
arms embargo against Yugoslavia and all its warring factions.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 6/19/96, p.A10)(AP,
9/20/01)
1991 Sep, The Croat militia
unit Autumn Rains arrived in Gospic. When front-line fighting ended
early this month, the unit turned its attention to the 9,000 Serbs
who lived in the area. Miro Bajramovic in 1997 admitted that the
unit tortured prisoners and he killed 72 people. He said that he
acted on the orders of interior minister Ivan Vekic.
(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A10,12)
1991 Oct 8, Slovenia and
Croatia began operating independently from Yugoslavia. Slovenia took
over its own borders and began printing its own money.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_modern_Croatia)(http://tinyurl.com/p5rhu)(SFC,
5/26/96, T-5)
1991 Oct 18, In Croatia 22
civilians died after being forced by Serbian soldiers into a mined
clover field in the village of Lovas.
(AFP,
6/26/12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovas_massacre)
1991 Oct, Early this month
Serbs opened bombardment of the Croatian port of Dubrovnik. At least
43 civilians were killed in the attack.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)
1991 Oct, At least 120 Serb
civilians were killed at Gospic, Croatia. In 2001 Maj. Gen. Mirko
Norac and 4 soldiers were indicted for the killing of at least 24
civilians at Gospic.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C4)(SFC, 3/6/01,
p.A12)
1991 Oct, During the siege of
Vukovar the Yugoslavian army and Serbian paramilitary troops killed
and buried as many as 1000 Croatian soldiers and civilians. The
bodies began to be uncovered in Apr 1998.
(SFC, 4/29/98, p.A12)
1991 Nov 18, Vukovar, capital
of eastern Slavonia, fell to the Serbs. They removed some 260
wounded Croat patients, hospital staff and political activists
sheltered in the Vukovar hospital and took them to the village of
Ovcara where most were shot and buried. On Mar 26, 1996 Slavko
Dokmanovic, the Serb mayor of Vukovar, was indicted for his role in
the incident. Investigators began uncovering bodies from the mass
grave in Sep, 1996. In Oct, 1996, a mass grave of about 100 bodies
was uncovered. When Serbs captured eastern Slavonia most of its
68,000 Croat residents were displaced to other parts of Croatia. In
1998 Dokmanovic hanged himself in jail at the Hague. In 1998 the
book "The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar" was published with
photographs by Gilles Peress and text by Eric Stover. In 1999
Vukovar returned to Croatian control.
(SFC, 9/12/96, p.A13)(SFC, 10/3/96, p.A14)(SFC,
4/11/97, p.A12)(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A10)(SFC, 6/30/98, p.A8)(SFEC,
12/20/98, BR p.6)(Econ, 11/29/03, p.47)
1991 Nov 20, Mile Mrksic,
Miroslav Radic, and Veselin Sljivan-Canin, officers in the Yugoslav
National Army, ordered the Serb army and military police to withdraw
from the hospital at Vukovar. The paramilitary forces then took 194
Croat men in small groups to an area nearby and shot them. Radic
surrendered to Serbian authorities in 2003. Mrksic and Sljivancanin
were convicted by a UN tribunal in 2007. Radic was acquitted.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A15)(SFC, 4/22/03, A7)(AP,
9/27/07)(WSJ, 9/28/07, p.A1)
1991 Dec 6, Gen. Pavle Strugar
led the Yugoslav attack on Dubrovnik. At least 43 civilians were
killed in the attack. Serbs had opened bombardment of the Croatian
port of Dubrovnik in early October. In 2001 Strugar (68) turned
himself into the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. In 2005 Strugar
was convicted of two counts of willful destruction of Dubrovnik and
attacking civilians. In 2008 appeals judges added two more
convictions for unjustified devastation of the town and attacking
civilian sites. They also cut his original sentence from eight years
to seven and a half years because of his deteriorating health.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/22/01, p.B1)(AP,
7/17/08)
1991 Dec 19, Rebel Serbs
declared independence in the Krajina region, which was almost a
third of Croatia. The Republic of Serbian Krajina lasted 4 years
with the hilltop fortress of Knin as the capital.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A15) (SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(WSJ,
4/22/99, A12)
1991 Dec, Germany gave
diplomatic recognition to Slovenia and Croatia. The EU said it would
recognize Croatia and Slovenia as independent states.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A19)
1991 Dec, Hungarian officials
discovered 11 tons of rocket launchers and automatic weapons being
loaded on trucks headed for Croatia in violation of a UN arms
embargo. They had been labeled as Chilean humanitarian aid for Sri
Lanka. In Chile Col. Gerardo Huber, who directed purchases at the
army's weapons manufacturer, turned up dead shortly after testifying
in a military investigation. His head had been blown apart by a
blast from a machine gun. In 2009 former Chilean Army Gen. Guillermo
Letelier and Air Force Gen. Vicente Rodriguez were sentenced to
prison for shipping arms to Croatia at the time of its battle for
independence from Yugoslavia. 11 people were sentenced by a military
court in June, 2009, for their roles in the deal. In October, 2009,
retired Gen. Victor Lizarraga and retired Col. Manuel Provis got 10
and eight years, respectively, for conspiracy and homicide. Gen.
Carlos Krum and Col. Julio Munoz, also both retired, got nearly 2
years for conspiracy and murder, respectively. The identity of the
gunman in Huber's murder remained unknown.
(AP, 6/10/09)(AP, 10/5/09)
1991 Stipe Mesic of Croatia was
the last leader of the collective Yugoslav presidency before the
country splintered.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
1991 The Adriatic port of
Zadar, Croatia, was bombed by Yugoslav army troops under Gen’l.
Momcilo Perisic. Some 30 civilians were killed and 120 buildings
damaged. He and 18 fellow officers went on trial in absentia in
Zagreb for war crimes in 1996.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A16)
1991 Eastern Slavonia was in
part occupied by Serbs who had fled or were driven from other parts
of Croatia.
(SFC, 1/22/96, p.C1)
1991 A Serb rebellion set off a
6-month war in which at least 10,000 people were killed. Serb rebels
backed by Yugoslavia seized a third of Croatia, but the territory
was regained in 1995.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)
1991 Yugoslavia exported 149
M-84 tanks to Kuwait. They were assembled in Croatia from components
made throughout Yugoslavia.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.52)
1991-1995 Argentina shipped weapons to Ecuador and
Croatia. The guns were initially shipped to Panama and Bolivia and
the Argentine government later blamed arms dealers for their
diversion.
(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.A24)
1992 Jan 2, Military commanders
in Croatia agreed to a cease-fire accord, the 15th attempt at a
truce.
(AP, 1/2/02)
1992 Jan 3, The UN, led by US
Sec. of State Cyrus Vance, brokered a cease-fire between the
Croatian government and rebel Serbs. Following subsequent breaches
the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) put 14,000 peacekeeping troops
into Croatia. The European Community (EC) recognized the
independence of Croatia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1992 Jan 7, Serb forces shot
down a European Community helicopter in Croatia, killing five truce
observers.
(AP, 1/7/02)
1992 Jan 15, The Yugoslav
federation, founded in 1918, effectively collapsed as the European
Community recognized the republics of Croatia and Slovenia.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1992 Mar 3, Bosnia’s Muslims
and Croats voted for independence in a referendum boycotted by
Serbs.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1992 May, Bosnia, Croatia and
Slovenia joined the UN.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
1992 May, The UN security
council approved new commercial sanctions against Yugoslavia, i.e.
Serbia, for backing rebel Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A14)
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1992 Aug 21, Serbian soldiers
separated over 200 men, mostly Croats and Muslims, from a convoy of
civilians from the Trnopolje detention camp in Bosnia. The captives
were taken to a wooded ravine at Mount Vlasic and shot dead.
In 2003 Darko Mrdja, commander of a special police unit, admitted to
a court in the Hague of playing a role in the slaughter. In 2009
Bosnian forensic experts found the remains of at least 60 Muslims
and Croats in the ravine.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.A8)(AP, 8/26/09)
1992 Dr. Matko Marusic,
immunologist, began his Croatian medical Journal.
(WSJ, 11/24/98, p.A1)
1992-1994 Major Gen'l. Stanislav Galic led the
Bosnian Serb Sarayevo Romanija Corps. In 1999 Ganic was captured by
NATO SFOR troops for war crimes. In 2003 Gen. Galic was sentenced to
20 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.A16)(SFC, 12/6/03, p.A11)
1992-1995 The war between Bosnia's Croats, Muslims
and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives. Government officials estimated
that at least 20,000 mostly Muslim women were raped during the
conflict.
(AFP, 11/29/10)
1993 Jan, Heavy fighting and
the bitter Serb siege of Serajevo continued. The UN and European
Union peace efforts failed and war broke out between Muslims and
Croats in Bosnia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1993 Apr 16, Bosnian Croats
took part in a killing spree in the village of Ahmici and 116
Muslims were massacred and the village set fire. 6 Bosnian Croats
went on trial in 1998 in the Hague on charges of war crimes. In 2000
Vladimir Santic, head of the Croat Jokers police unit, was sentenced
to 25 years in prison; Drago Josipovic was sentenced to 15 years;
Zoran and Mirjan Kupreskic were sentenced to 10 and 8 years, and
Vlatko Kupreskic received 6 years.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.C2)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A11)
1993 Apr 16, A Bosnian army
unit massacred 16 Croatian civilians and at least 4 disarmed
soldiers in the village of Trusina.
(SFC, 4/14/11,
p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusina_case)
1993 Dec 14, In Algeria a large
group of armed terrorists attacked a work camp of a hydro-electric
project in Tamezguida. Fourteen Croatian citizens were taken out of
the camp. Twelve were murdered by having their throats slit, but two
others escaped with injuries.
{Algeria, Croatia}
(www.milnet.com/state/chrono93.htm)
1993 A Bosnian Croat, Zlatko
Aleksovski, was one of six men charged in 1996 with killing Muslims
in the central Lasva Valley in this year.
(SFC, 6/10/96, C16)
1993 Croat Gen. Ivan Andabaka
was a member of the Convicts Battalion, a group believed to have
been involved with atrocities against Muslims. Andabaka was arrested
in 2000.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C7)
1993 Ignac Kostroman, believed
to be involved in the massacre of Ahmici in Bosnia, was arrested in
Croatia in 2000.
(SFC, 9/14/00,
p.C7)(www.applicom.com/twibih/twib0009.html)
1993-1994 Mladen Naletilic commanded a gang of
convicts who terrorized Muslims in southwestern Bosnia. In 2000
Croatia handed over Naletilic, a Bosnian Croat indicted in 1998 on
17 counts of war crimes, to the UN tribunal.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
1994 Mar 30, Serbs and Croats
signed a cease-fire to end their war in Croatia while Bosnian
Muslims and Serbs continued to battle each other.
(AP, 3/30/99)
1994 Mar 18, Bosnian Muslims
and Croats agreed to a federation between them and confederation
with Croatia in an agreement brokered by the US. Pres. Tudjman of
Croatia approached US diplomats about possible arms shipments from
Iran.
(AP, 3/18/04)(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97,
p.A12)
1994 Apr, Anthony Lake,
national security advisor, approved a State Dept. proposal that
Peter Galbraith, US ambassador to Croatia, tell the Croatian
government he had “no instructions” on whether the US approved or
disapproved the shipment of arms to Bosnia through Croatia.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.A7)
1994 Nov 19, The U.N. Security
Council, anxious to stop Serb attacks on the "safe area" of Bihac in
northwest Bosnia, authorized NATO to bomb rebel Serb forces striking
from neighboring Croatia.
(AP, 11/19/99)
1994 Nov 21, NATO retaliated
for repeated Serb attacks on a U.N. safe haven by bombing an
airfield in a Serb-controlled section of Croatia.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1994 Istria was the first
region of the former Yugoslavia to be officially designated as a
"Region of Europe". The Istria of 2005, alternatively called Istra
and Istrija, is politically divided into three separate countries:
Croatia, Slovenia and Italy.
(www.istrians.com/istria/maps/)
1995 May 1, The Croatian army
captured the Serb enclave of Western Slavonia in its first major bid
to retake territories occupied in 1991. In reply the Krajina Serbs
launched a rocket attack on Zagreb, the Croatian capital. Milan
Martic, Croatian Serb leader of rebel Serb forces, ordered the
shelling of Zagreb. Martic surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal
in 2002.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A15)(SFC,
5/8/02, p.A17)
1995 May 2, Serb missiles
exploded in the heart of Zagreb, killing six.
(www.hri.org/news/usa/std/1995/95-05-02.std.html)
1995 Aug 4, Croatia launched an
offensive against Krajina, Operation Storm, and captured in days a
region that Serb rebels had held for 4 years. Most of its province
of Krajina, including the Serb stronghold Knin, was taken in a 3-day
offensive. Some 3,000 shells were fired into Knin and less than 250
hit military targets. Some 100,000 Croatian Serbs were driven from
the area. Up to 600 Serb civilians were killed. A report on the
events was published in 1999: "Report on the Military Operation
Storm and its Aftermath" by the Croatian Helsinki Committee for
Human Rights.
(WSJ, 6/11/96, p.A14)(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)(SFEC,
3/21/99, p.A17)(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A10)
1995 Aug, Some 200,000 Serbs
were moved from the Krajina region. More than 4,500 were killed and
some 3,000 are still listed as missing in an operation that was
directed by retired American generals through MPRI of Alexandria,
Va. About 14,000 Krajina Serbs ended up in Kosovo until 1998, when
they left as violence spread.
(WSJ, 8/1/96 p.A15)(SFC, 7/6/99, p.B1)
1995 Sep 15, A Muslim-Croat
offensive won 1,500 square miles of land. More than 150,000 Serbs
fled, many to Eastern Slovenia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 5, Pres. Clinton
announced that a cease-fire was agreed on in Bosnia to start on Oct
10, and that combatants would attend talks in the US.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 12, After a 2-day
delay, a cease-fire in Bosnia went into effect a minute after
midnight. Fighting continued over contested towns in northwest
Bosnia.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Oct 16-1995 Oct 18,
Richard Holbrooke and other international mediators met in Moscow
and traveled to the main capitals of the former Yugoslavia. The US
named the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, as the
site for the peace talks.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Nov 1, Peace talks for the
countries of the former Yugoslavia were launched in Dayton, Ohio.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A12)
1995 Nov 21, The Dayton Peace
Accord, was initialed by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
US Sec. of State, Warren Christopher and chief mediator Richard
Holbrooke manage to keep the parties talking for over 3 weeks to
reach this agreement to end three and a-half years of ethnic
fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina. One year deployment of 20,000 US
troops as one-third of a NATO peace keeping force was estimated to
cost about $1.5 bil. The US also planned to contribute $600 mil over
three years to help rebuild Bosnia.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A1,3)(SFC, 10/6/00, p.A19)(AP,
11/21/00)
1995 Nov, Croatian leader
Franco Tudjman said he will hold forces back from a Serb held area
of Croatia during peace talks.
(WSJ, 10/20/95, p. A-1)
1995 Dec 14, An agreement for
peace in Bosnia, reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Dayton, Ohio, was formally signed. Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of
Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia
signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris. The agreement divided
Bosnia into 2 autonomous territories and granted 51% of Bosnia to
the Muslim-Croat federation and 49% to the Serbs (Republika Srpska).
Elections were scheduled and a force of 60,000 Western troops was
planned for deployment. A 3-member presidency and a national
parliament was also part of the plan. The office of High
Representative was created to oversee the implementation of the
civilian aspects of the Peace Agreement.
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A8)(SFC, 9/22/98, p.A8)(AP,
12/14/00)(www.ohr.int/)
1996 Apr 3, A US Air Force
jetliner crashed near Dubrovnik, Croatia, and 35 people on board
were killed including Ron Brown, Sec. of Commerce. Brown had been
leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia
to explore business opportunities that might help rebuild the
war-torn region.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-1)(WSJ, 4/5/96, p.A-1)(AP,
4/3/97)(MC, 4/3/02)
1996 May 18, In Zagreb two
prominent journalists face trial for mocking Pres. Franjo Tudjman
over his proposal to rebury pro-Nazi dead beside their Jewish and
Serbian victims. Court papers were given to Feral editor Viktor
Ivancic and lead writer Marinko Culic.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.A-10)
1996 Jun 9, Police announced
the arrest of a Bosnian Croat, Zlatko Aleksovski, charged with
murder and mistreatment of Muslim prisoners. He is one of six men
charged with killing Muslims in the central Lasva Valley 3 years
ago.
(SFC, 6/10/96, C16)
1996 Jun 16, Croats in Mostar
named Pero Markovic as the new president of Herzeg-Bosnia.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.A10)
1996 Jun 16, Members of a
Muslim party beat former Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic during a
northern Bosnia political rally. Leaders of Serbia, Croatia and
Bosnia signed an agreement to reduce arsenals of heavy weapons.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A1)
1996 Aug 7, The presidents of
Serbia and Croatia agreed to establish diplomatic relations.
(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A11)
1996 Sep 6, In Croatia a 6.0
earthquake hit the town of Ston.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A9)
1996 Oct 7, A spokesman for the
UN transitional authority in Eastern Slavonia said 200 bodies were
unearthed near Vukovar from the 1991 Serb occupation.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A10)
1996 Oct 16, The Council of
Europe, a promoter of democracy and human rights, admitted Croatia
as its 40th member.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A11)
1996 Nov 12, A building in
Mostar, renovated under contract with the European Union, was taken
over and adopted as the High Court of the Croatian Republic of
Herceg-Bosnia. It was supposed to have been Mostar’s City Hall under
joint administration by Croats and Muslims.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.C3)
1996 Nov 20, In Zagreb,
Croatia, thousands protested the government’s attempt to close the
independent Radio 101.
(SFC, 11/21/96, p.C6)
1996 Dec 25, Croatian Serbs
attacked Croats who had been bused in to their former hometown in
Eastern Slavonia for Christmas services.
(WSJ, 12/26/96, p.A1)
1997 Jan 24, Radio station 101
was awarded a broadcast license after a long battle with the Croat
nationalist government.
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.C1)
1997 May 16, Southwest of
Zagreb mobs of Croat refugees rampaged through at least 4 Serbian
villages during the week and forced dozens of Serbs to flee. A
campaign was growing to drive out of the country some 100,000 Serbs
who have remained since the end of the Balkan war and to block
returning Serbs from re-settling.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A13)
1997 Jul 15, Eastern Slavonia
was scheduled to be handed over to Croatian authorities. It had been
seized by the Serbs in 1991. [see Jan 15, 1998]
(SFC, 1/22/96, p.C1)
1997 Jun 15, In Croatia voting
irregularities occurred as Franjo Tudjman led low-turnout elections
with 59%.
(SFC, 6/16/97, p.A8)
1997 Jun 10, The US endorsed a
$13 million loan to Croatia.
(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C2)
1997 Aug 5, In Croatia Pres.
Tudjman took an oath of office for his 2nd 5-year term.
(WSJ, 8/6/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct, The documentary film
"Tudjman," about the leader of Croatia, was directed by Jakov Sedlar
and Joe Tripican. It was first shown in Los Angeles with a
travelogue on Croatia.
(SFC,12/31/97, p.A8)
1997 Nov 6, In Belgrade former
Serb soldier and convict, Slobodan Misic, was arrested after he told
reporters that he had killed up to 80 Croats and Muslims near
Vukovar in eastern Croatia and in the Bratunac-Srebrenica area of
eastern Bosnia in 1991.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.D3)
1998 Jan 15, Eastern Slavonia
reintegrated into Croatia. Some 75,000 Croat refugees promised
friction with the Serbs occupying their homes. The 2-year UN peace
mission ended but 180 int’l. observers were to remain as monitors.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, Par p.2)(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)(SFC,
1/16/98, p.B2)
1998 Jan, The Croat government
passed a decree that permitted the eviction of thousands of Serbs
from state-owned apartments in Eastern Slavonia. The decree was
rescinded in Feb.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.D3)
1998 Feb 20, Tens of thousands
of Croats protested in Zagreb against high unemployment and falling
living standards.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A10)
1998 May, In Croatia Gojko
Susak, the Croatian Defense Minister, died of cancer. He had
directed the wartime revolt by Bosnian Croats against the Muslim-led
Bosnian government.
(SFC, 5/14/98, p.C18)
1998 Jul 25, It was
reported that authorities in Split, Croatia, declared a natural
disaster following an invasion of mice that devoured the region’s
crops.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A8)
1998 Oct 3, In Croatia Pope
John Paul II beatified Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, the World War II
archbishop of Zagreb and a controversial figure because many Serbs
and Jews accused him of sympathizing with the Nazis.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.A22)(AP, 10/3/99)
1998 Oct 22, In Croatia a 2nd
clerk revealed that Pres. Franco Tudjman’s wife, Ankica Tudjman, had
deposited nearly $300,000 into her bank account over the last 2
years. Robert Horvat and Ankica Lepej were to be indicted for
violating bank secrecy laws. Mrs. Tudjman was a pensioner who ran a
children’s charity.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D3)
1998 Oct 26, In Croatia a jury
reversed itself after 2 weeks and crowned a new Miss Croatia, a
member of the Catholic majority. Lejla Sehovic, the original winner,
was a Muslim.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.B5)
1999 Mar 20, A war crimes
tribunal at the Hague recommended that 3 Croatian generals be
indicted for war crimes for "Operation Storm" in Aug, 1995.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, p.A17)
1999 Jul 1, Croatia planned to
file charges against Yugoslavia in The Hague for genocide following
its declaration of independence in 1991.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.A18)
1999 Nov 24, In Croatia the
parliament passed a constitutional amendment that declared Pres.
Tudjman (77) to be temporarily disabled and acted to pass power to
Vlatko Pavletic, speaker of parliament.
(SFC, 11/25/99, p.A14)(WSJ, 11/26/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 10, In Croatia Pres.
Franjo Tudjman died at age 77. Vlatko Pavletic (1930-2007), speaker
of Croatia's parliament, began serving as acting president for two
months.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.A16)(AP, 9/19/07)
2000 Jan 3, In Croatia a
center-left coalition won the elections over the nationalist
Democratic Union (HDZ). Leading the coalition were Ivica Racan (55)
of the Social Democratic Party and Drazen Budisa (52) of the
Social-Liberals.
(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 24, In Croatia 42% of
voters chose Stipe Mesic for president and 28% chose Drazen Budisa.
A runoff was set for Feb 7.
(SFC, 1/25/00, p.A11)
2000 Feb 7, In Croatia Stipe
Mesic (65) was elected president over Drazen Budisa (51) by a 56.2
to 43.8% margin.
(SFC, 2/8/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar 9, In Bosnia US Sec.
of state Madeleine Albright won a pledge from Croatian and Bosnian
Serb leaders to allow thousands of refugees to go home.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A13)
2000 Mar 21, Croatia handed
over Mladen Naletilic, a Bosnian Croat indicted in 1998 on 17 counts
of war crimes, to the UN tribunal. Naletilic commanded a gang of
convicts who terrorized Muslims in southwestern Bosnia between
1993-1994.
(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A12)
2000 May 11, NATO nations
approved Croatia’s bid to join the Partnership for Peace following
talks with Prime Minister Ivica Racan on progress toward democratic
reforms.
(SFC, 5/12/00, p.D2)
2000 Aug 28, Milan Levar (45)
was killed in a bomb blast. He had testified on the killing of Serb
civilians in Gospic, Croatia, in 1991. A dozen suspects were later
arrested.
(SFC, 9/14/00, p.C4)
2001 Feb 11, In Croatia some
100,000 protested the investigation of former general Mirko Norac
for war crimes in 1991.
(SFC, 2/12/01, p.B2)
2001 May 9, In Split, Croatia,
a soccer brawl left 130 people injured including 30 police.
(SFC, 5/11/01, p.D4)
2001 May 19, In Croatia
nationalists in local elections won 14 of 21 counties.
(WSJ, 5/22/01, p.A1)
2001 Jul 7, In Croatia PM Ivica
Racan announced that citizens indicted by the UN War Crimes tribunal
could be extradited to the Hague.
(SSFC, 7/8/01, p.A16)
2001 Jul 13, The Croat
government identified Gen. Rahim Ademi as one of the 1st 2 Croats to
be indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for atrocities against the
Serbs in 1995. The other was identified as Ante Godovina.
(SFC, 7/14/01, p.A12)
2001 Jul 26, The UN War Crimes
tribunal indicted Gen. Ante Gotovina on 8 counts of war crimes
linked to alleged atrocities in 1995. In 2005 Croatia’s failure to
arrest him hindered the country’s entry to the EU.
(SFC, 7/27/01, p.D6)(Econ, 3/12/05, p.52)
2001 Oct 15, It was reported
that Croatian officials had suspended the use of Baxter Int’l.
filters for kidney dialysis machines after 23 patients died in a
week. A similar incident in Spain killed 10 people but tests seemed
to rule out the filters.
(WSJ, 10/15/01, p.A1)
2001 A grape genetically
identical to California’s zinfandel was discovered growing wild in
Croatia.
(SFC, 9/7/05, p.F8)
2002 Jul 5, Croatian Prime
Minister Ivica Racan resigned in a political maneuver apparently
aimed at forcing a rival party out of his coalition government.
(AP, 7/5/02)
2002 Oct 3, NATO and European
Union called on Croatia to cooperate with the U.N. War Crimes
Tribunal, urging the government to hand over indicted war crimes
suspect Gen. Janko Bobetko.
(AP, 10/3/02)
2002 Nov 1, Jakov Sirotkovic
(80), a prominent economist and high-ranking member of the Communist
party in the former Yugoslavia (head of the Cabinet in Croatia),
died.
(AP, 11/1/02)
2002 Cardinal Franjo Kuharic
(83), former primate of Croatia (1970-1997), died.
(SFC, 3/12/02, p.A21)
2003 Apr 5, Croatian police
have arrested Ivica Rajic (45), a Bosnian Croat long sought by the
UN war crimes tribunal, for allegedly carrying out atrocities
against Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.
(AP, 4/6/03)
2003 Apr 29, Croatian wartime
army chief Janko Bobetko (84), hailed at home as a hero of Croatia's
1991 struggle for independence but charged with war crimes by a UN
court, died.
(AP, 4/29/03)
2003 Jun 5, Pope John Paul II
began his landmark 100th foreign pilgrimage with a five-day,
five-city tour of Croatia.
(AP, 6/5/03)
2003 Nov 18, The UN war crimes
tribunal issued an indictment against former Croatian Serb leader
Milan Babic on five counts of war crimes for a campaign of ethnic
cleansing in the Krajina region of Croatia early in the Balkan wars.
(AP, 11/18/03)(WSJ, 11/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Nov 23, The Croatian
Nationalist Democratic Union (HDZ), led by Ivo Sanader, won
parliamentary elections.
(AP, 11/24/03)(Econ, 11/29/03, p.47)
2003 Nov 24, The Croatian
Nationalist Democratic Union (HDZ), which led the drive to
independence and later into isolation, began negotiating with
potential partners to form a new government after winning
parliamentary elections.
(AP, 11/24/03)
2003 Dec 23, In Croatia Ivo
Sanader (b.1953) began serving as prime minister. He resigned office
in 2009.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Sanader)
2003 Dec 31, The UN refugee
agency closed its last three field offices in Croatia.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2003 The population of Croatia
was about 4.5 million.
(AP, 6/23/03)
2004 Jan 27, Wartime Croatian
Serb leader Milan Babic (1991-1992) pleaded guilty to persecution in
a plan to ethnically cleanse parts of Croatia of non-Serbs at the
outset of the Balkan wars, and expressed "a deep sense of shame" for
his crimes. Babic was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
(AP, 1/27/04)(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 8, US Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe
Mesic for Croatia's small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Apr 5, Six ethnic Croats
surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal to face allegations they
participated in the torture and massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in
1993.
(AP, 4/5/04)
2004 Aug, A team of Croatian
cavers descended 1,693 feet to Earth’s deepest know hole in the
Velebit Mountains of Croatia.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A6)
2004 Slavenca Drakulic,
Croatian novelist and journalist, authored “They Would Never Hurt a
Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague.”
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.M1)
2005 Jan 2, In Croatia Pres.
Stipe Mesic won about 49 percent of the votes, compared with 20
percent for his closest rival, conservative government minister
Jadranka Kosor, the popular incumbent narrowly failed to win the
absolute majority required for a first-round victory. Voters will
return to the polls later this month for a presidential runoff.
(AP, 1/3/05)
2005 Jan 16, Croatians returned
to the polls for presidential runoff. Pres. Stipe Mesic won a 2nd
term in the runoff election with 66% of the vote.
(AP, 1/17/05)
2005 Jun 19, Top Croatian
financial officials left for Washington to present a package of
fiscal proposals that should shore up this year's budget and save
the stand-by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund.
(AP, 6/19/05)
2005 Jul 19, Miroslav Bralo
(37), former Bosnian Croat special forces soldier, pleaded guilty to
war crimes at the Yugoslav tribunal in the Hague. Bralo was a member
of an infamous unit, known as "the Jokers," responsible for attacks
on Bosnian Muslim villages in the Lasva Valley of central Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1993.
(AP, 7/19/05)
2005 Jul, Montenegro agreed to
pay Croatia $460,000 in war compensation for cattle taken by its
soldiers in June, 1991.
(Econ, 7/30/05, p.46)
2005 Sep 9, Croatia's
government said that army officers can give lessons about the 1991
Serbo-Croat war in elementary schools, despite critics' claims the
move marks a return to communist-style links between schools and the
military.
(AP, 9/9/05)
2005 Sep 20, Croatia issued an
international arrest warrant for Milivoj Aschner (92), a former
police chief in eastern Croatia and requested that Austria extradite
him. Aschner allegedly enforced racist laws in 1941-1942 under
Croatia's World War II Nazi puppet regime, which persecuted tens of
thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs.
(AP, 9/22/05)
2005 Sep 20, Carla Del Ponte,
chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), told the Daily Telegraph that she believed
General Ante Gotovina was being sheltered in a Franciscan monastery
in Croatia. The Vatican denied any knowledge.
(AP, 9/20/05)
2005 Oct 4, Croatia began
delayed EU membership talks, after UN chief war crimes prosecutor
Carla del Ponte endorsed Zagreb's cooperation with her court.
(AFP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 21, Britain and
Croatia confirmed cases of bird flu as countries around the world
scrambled to put in place measures to prevent the spread of the
virus. British officials said a parrot that had been imported from
South America died of bird flu in quarantine.
(AP, 10/22/05)
2005 Oct 26, The EU said the
dangerous H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in Croatia.
Authorities said a 2nd parrot that died in quarantine in Britain was
also infected with the virus.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Dec 4, Croatia won its
first Davis Cup title.
(AP, 12/4/06)
2005 Dec 7, Spanish authorities
arrested former Gen. Ante Gotovina, the top Croatian war crimes
suspect, after four years on the run. He was captured in the Canary
Islands when special police agents surprised him as he dined in a
luxury beach hotel.
(AP, 12/08/05)
2005 Dec 15, A Croatian court
sentenced six ethnic Serbs to between six and 14 years in prison in
a retrial over the brutal harassment of Croat prisoners at the
outset of Zagreb's 1991-95 war of independence.
(Reuters, 12/15/05)
2005 Dec 29, In Croatia
Slobodan Davidovic (52), an ethnic Serb seen killing Muslims in a
nationally televised video, was convicted of war crimes and
sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the judge saying he had shown
"no mercy or compassion" for his victims.
(AP, 12/29/05)
2006 Mar 2, In Croatia 8 former
soldiers were convicted of torturing ethnic Serbs in a wartime
prison, four years after they were cleared of the same charges in a
trial later annulled as being flawed.
(AP, 3/2/06)
2006 Apr 9, Croatia’s Pres.
Stjepan Mesic visited the SF Bay Area, home to some 50,000
Croatians, for economic support. Croatia’s population stood at about
4.5 million people.
(SFC, 4/10/06, p.A2)
2006 Apr 19, In Croatia workers
who have been occupying a tobacco factory in Zagreb for nearly two
weeks asked the chief state prosecutor to investigate their claims
that the facility was illegally sold to a local tobacco giant.
(AP, 4/20/06)
2006 May 6, Vice President Dick
Cheney met with President Stipe Mesic of Croatia, the final stop of
a three-nation tour dominated by the issue of political reform in
countries making the post-Cold War transition toward democracy.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 7, Vice President Dick
Cheney endorsed the NATO membership aspirations of Croatia, Albania
and Macedonia.
(AP, 5/7/06)
2006 May 8, In the Hague the UN
war crimes court sentenced Ivica Rajic, a Bosnian Croat former
militia leader, to 12 years in prison. Rajic admitted that forces
under his command operating in the Muslim village of Stupni Do in
central Bosnia in October 1993 "forced Bosnian Muslim civilians out
of their homes and hiding places, robbed them of their valuables,
willfully killed Muslim men, women and children and sexually
assaulted Muslim women".
(AFP, 5/8/06)
2006 Oct 26, Croatian lawmaker
Branimir Glavas, suspected of ordering the torture and killing of
Serb civilians in 1991 during the Serbo-Croat war, was detained on
war crimes charges after a parliament commission lifted his
parliamentary immunity.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Nov 4, Swathes of Austria,
Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the
Netherlands and went dark for up to an hour in the late evening as
cold Germans rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from
Europe's interconnected networks.
(AP, 11/5/06)
2007 Feb 18, In Nigeria gunmen
seized three Croatian workers. The men were abducted in the region's
main city of Port Harcourt.
(AFP, 2/19/07)
2007 Mar 12, In Nigeria’s oil
region hostage takers released 3 European captives. 2 Croatians and
one Montenegrin seized Feb. 18 in Port Harcourt were in good health
after their release to state officials.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2007 Jun 12, In the Netherlands
the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted Milan Martic (52), a
wartime leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs, of murder, torture and
persecution and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for the
1991-1995 brutal ethnic cleansing campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia.
(AP, 6/12/07)(WSJ, 6/13/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 15, Antun Gudelj (59),
a Croatian man charged with killing three police officials in the
early days of the 1991 Serb-Croat war, was extradited from Australia
to Croatia to face a new trial after an earlier pardon.
(AP, 7/15/07)
2007 Aug 30, In Croatia six men
were killed and seven badly injured when they were trapped battling
a fierce forest blaze on Kornat Island. 8 men were soon detained on
suspicion of arson. PM Ivo Sanader promised an investigation saying
it was the biggest tragedy in Croatian firefighting.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 19, Vlatko Pavletic
(77), a former speaker of Croatia's parliament who served as acting
president for two months beginning in Dec, 1999, died.
(AP, 9/19/07)
2007 Sep 27, A UN tribunal
convicted Mile Mrksic (60), a Serb army officer, of clearing the way
for the torture and killing of 194 Croats seized from a hospital in
a 1991 massacre. Veselin Sljivancanin (54), the area's chief
security officer, was sentenced to five years for failing to protect
the Croats from beatings and torture by the local Serb paramilitary
forces and Territorial Defense units. Officer Miroslav Radic (45)
was acquitted of any wrongdoing.
(AP, 9/27/07)(WSJ, 9/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 25, Croatia held
parliamentary elections. Exit polls and preliminary results showed
that the ruling conservatives and opposition center-left Social
Democrats were virtually tied.
(AP, 11/26/07)
2007 Nov 26, Croatia's ruling
conservative HDZ party looked on course to win another four years in
power and take the nation into the EU after a close-fought
parliamentary election. The ruling conservatives and center-left
opposition sought allies after the vote left no clear winner.
(AP, 11/26/07)(WSJ, 11/27/07, p.A1)
2007 Dec 10, American blues
guitarist "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks (67), who mastered the sound of
the 1930s' Delta Blues, died in a clinic in Croatia.
(AP, 12/10/07)
2008 Jan 12, Croatia’s
Parliament approved a new coalition government headed by PM Ivo
Sanader, who vowed to pursue Croatia's quest to join the EU and
NATO.
(AP, 1/12/08)
2008 Mar 11, Three generals
regarded as national heroes in Croatia went on trial at the Hague,
accused of orchestrating the killing of at least 150 Serbs in a 1995
military campaign that unleashed widespread murder and pillage.
(AP, 3/11/08)
2008 Apr 3, Ivan Korade (44), a
retired Croatian army general suspected in a grisly quadruple
murder, died during a shootout with police that also killed one
officer. On April 1 Korade was charged with the March 27 killing of
four people in his village of Velika Veternicka: a 16-year-old boy,
his 62-year-old grandmother and two men, including a former Korade
aide.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 4, US President George
W. Bush arrived in Croatia after a NATO summit at which leaders
invited the former Yugoslav republic to join the 26-nation western
alliance.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 5, In Croatia
President Bush celebrated NATO's expansion into former communist
territory and urged further enlargement, highlighting differences
with Moscow hours before final talks with outgoing Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 4/5/08)
2008 Jul 15, Croatia adopted a
law that allows Sunday shopping only over the summer and Christmas
holidays. It goes into effect January 1. The law also allows stores
in gas, bus and train stations to open on Sundays year-round, along
with those in hospitals. Bakeries, newsstands and flower shops are
also exempt from the ban.
(AP, 7/16/08)
2008 Oct 2, General Vladimir
Zagorec was extradited from Austria to Croatia on charges of
stealing gems used a collateral in an arms deal during the Balkan
wars of the 1990s. 4 days later his lawyer’s daughter Ivana Hodak
(26) was murdered.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.61)
2008 Oct 23, In Croatia Ivo
Pukanic (47), who owned and edited Nacional, an influential
publication known for its investigative journalism and Nacional's
marketing director, Niko Franjic, died when an explosive device was
placed near their car in the capital, Zagreb. On Oct 31 Croatian
police filed murder charges against five people over the bombing
deaths. In 2010 six alleged members of a crime gang were convicted
of conspiring to assassinate Pukanic and a fellow worker. Main
suspect Zeljko Milovanovic, who was tried in absentia, was sentenced
to the maximum 40 years in prison. He was being held in neighboring
Serbia and tried on similar charges. 5 other defendants were
sentenced to 15 to 33 years in prison.
(AP, 10/24/08)(AP, 10/31/08)(AP, 11/3/10)
2008 Dec 3, NATO foreign
ministers affirmed their support for US plans to install
anti-missile defenses in Europe despite Russia's strong opposition.
NATO foreign ministers said they expected Albania and Croatia to
become the alliance's newest members by April.
(AP, 12/3/08)
2008 Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss
prosecutor, authored (with Chuck Sudetic) “Madame Prosecutor:
Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of
Impunity.” It covered her 8 years chasing Balkan war criminals. In
2009 this Italian edition was made available in English.
(Econ, 1/24/09, p.88)
2009 Jan 6, A natural gas
crisis loomed over Europe, as a contract dispute between Russia and
Ukraine shut off Russian gas supplies to six countries and reduced
gas deliveries to several others. Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia,
Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments.
(AP, 1/6/09)
2009 Apr 1, Albania and Croatia
became NATO’s newest members.
(SFC, 4/2/09, p.A2)
2009 May 8, A Croatian court
convicted an opposition lawmaker of war crimes, making him the
country's first senior politician to be held responsible for wartime
atrocities against Serbs. Branimir Glavas was sentenced to 10 years
in prison for war crimes against civilians, but he remained free
because he enjoys parliamentary immunity from detention. During the
1991 Serbo-Croat war, he 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.
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 Jun 23, Serbia's war
crimes court convicted Damir Sireta, a Croatian Serb man, for the
execution-style killings in Vukovar of some 200 Croatian prisoners
of war in 1991 during the Balkan conflict. Sireta was sentenced to
20 years in prison.
(AP, 6/23/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Croatia PM Ivo
Sanader (b.1953) unexpectedly announced his resignation.
(Econ, 7/4/09,
p.50)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Sanader)
2009 Jul 6, In Croatia
deputy Jadranka Kosor (b.1953), a former journalist, was confirmed
as the new prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadranka_Kosor)
2009 Jul 24, In southern
Croatia a passenger train derailed, killing at least six people and
injuring about 20.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Dec 27, Croatians went to
the polls amid a deepening economic crisis and concerns over
high-level corruption to elect a president to steer the Balkans
country into the EU. Centrist Stipe Mesic (75) stands down in
February after serving the maximum two five-year terms and
successfully transforming the country from a nationalist autocracy
into a parliamentary democracy. Social Democrat lawmaker Ivo
Josipovic garnered 32.4% of votes and Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic, who
ran as independent candidate, got 14.8% of votes. The top two
finishers will face each other in a Jan. 10 runoff.
(AFP, 12/27/09)(AP, 12/28/09)
2010 Jan 4, Serbia filed a
lawsuit against Croatia at the International Court of Justice,
accusing it of genocide during the 1991-1995 Balkan war, which
killed or displaced thousands of people.
(AP, 1/5/10)
2010 Jan 10, Croatia held a
presidential run-off vote pitting a left-wing professor against the
populist Zagreb mayor. Front-runner Ivo Josipovic vowed to crack
down on corruption and lead the recession-hit nation into the EU.
Law expert and classical music composer Josipovic (b.1957) won the
runoff presidential vote, beating popular Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic.
(AFP, 1/10/10)(AP, 1/10/10)
2010 Mar 20, Croatia and
Slovenia hosted the 1st locally organized conference of the heads of
government of the former Yugoslavia.
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.54)
2010 Apr 19, The Slovenian
parliament ratified a border arbitration deal with Croatia vital for
Zagreb's EU membership bid, but the deal still faces a much tougher
test at a June referendum in Slovenia.
(Reuters, 4/19/10)
2010 May 4, The Croatian
government and the UN said Justice Minister Ivan Simonovic has been
chosen to be assistant UN secretary-general for human rights.
(AP, 5/4/10)
2010 May, Serbia and Croatia
announced plans for a regional center to fight organized crime.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.54)
2010 Jun 8, Serbia and Croatia
signed a defense co-operation agreement.
(Econ, 6/26/10, p.54)
2010 Jul 9, Prosecutors at the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague cited Ratko Mladic's
diaries, seized in a raid on his wife's Belgrade home in February,
in a motion to reopen the trial of former Bosnian Croat political
leader Jadranko Prlic and five other political and military Croat
officials that ended two months ago.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Sep, In Croatia Mladen
Barisic, a former treasurer of the ruling Croatia Democratic Union
(HDZ) was arrested. He told investigators that he used to bring
former PM Ivo Sanader large bags of cash channeled from public
companies that the pair indirectly controlled.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.60)
2010 Oct 5, In Zagreb, Croatia,
artists Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic opened the first
permanent gallery of their Museum of Broken Relationships.
(Econ, 11/27/10,
p.96)(http://new.brokenships.com/en)
2010 Oct 27, Croatian PM
Jadranka Kosor survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament, with the
opposition complaining about Croatia's economic decline and
corruption in the upper echelons of her party. Parliament voted 79
to 62 in Kosor's support, 15 votes short of what was needed to oust
her in the 151-seat chamber.
(AP, 10/27/10)
2010 Nov 4, Serbian President
Boris Tadic apologized at the Ovcara site near Vukovar of the 1991
bloody massacre of more than 200 Croats, offering the strongest
condemnation yet by a Serbian leader of Serb wartime atrocities.
(AP, 11/4/10)
2010 Nov 23, Croatia’s Atlantic
Grupa food company took over Slovenia’s Droga Kolinska for $326
million. This was the biggest corporate deal in the Balkans in
recent years.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.72)
2010 Dec 9, Former Croatian PM
Ivo Sanader, under investigation in a corruption case, left the
country crossing into Slovenia, hours before parliament voted on
lifting his immunity from prosecution so that he could be detained.
(AP, 12/9/10)
2010 Dec 10, Police in Croatia
issued an international arrest warrant overnight for former PM Ivo
Sanader, who left the country just as it became clear that
prosecutors wanted him investigated and detained on corruption
charges. Sanader was arrested on an international warrant in
Austria.
(AP, 12/10/10)(AP, 12/11/10)
2010 Dec 30, In Croatia the
leading daily Sata published only good news for today. A huge smiley
face appeared on the front page, and politics and crime were
banished. The horoscope still forecast trouble for people with some
signs.
(AP, 12/30/10)
2011 Feb 26, In Croatia some
15,000 people have gathered at a protest in Zagreb organized by the
veterans of the country's 1991-95 independence war. They were
protesting in support of a fellow veteran awaiting extradition to
Serbia in a Bosnian prison. Officers used tear gas to disperse the
group. At least 25 people were injured.
(AP, 2/26/11)
2011 Mar 16, US federal agents
arrested Azra Basic (52), a Croatian woman in small-town Kentucky
for alleged war crimes two decades ago in the former Yugoslavia. A
complaint accused Basic of committing crimes at three camps near the
majority-Serbian settlement of Cardak in Derventa. Authorities said
that, as a soldier in the Croatian army, she killed a prisoner and
tortured others by forcing them to drink human blood and gasoline.
(AP, 3/18/11)
2011 Mar 25, Croatia arrested
Bojan Milkovic, head of the INA, the country’s national oil company,
on corruption charges.
(Econ, 4/23/11, p.56)(http://tinyurl.com/3tnzyqm)
2011 Apr 13, Edin Dzeko (39) of
Washington state was arrested for extraction to Bosnia for his
alleged participation in the massacre of Croatian civilians in the
village of Trusina as a member of a Bosnian army unit in April,
1993. 16 civilians and at least 4 disarmed soldiers were killed in
the village.
(SFC, 4/14/11, p.A5)
2011 Apr 15, In the Netherlands
Gen. Ante Gotovina (55), a commander hailed by Croats as a hero of
the Balkan conflict, was convicted of war crimes by a UN court and
sentenced to 24 years in prison for a campaign of shelling,
shootings and expulsions aimed at driving Serbs out of a Croatian
border region in 1995.
(AP, 4/15/11)
2011 Apr 16, Several thousand
Croats protested against The Hague convicting two former Croatian
generals whose trial was a condition of Croatia's attempt to join
the European Union.
(Reuters, 4/16/11)
2011 May 9, An Austrian court
approved the extradition of former Croatian PM Ivo Sanader to his
homeland where he is suspected of corruption while in office.
(AP, 5/9/11)
2011 Jun 18, In Bulgaria nearly
1,000 marchers joined the fourth gay pride rally in Sofia. Gay pride
rallies were also held in Croatia and Hungary. Hundreds of police
were on duty to protect the marchers following calls by extremist
groups to stop the demonstrations.
(AP, 6/18/11)
2011 Jun 24, EU officials said
Croatia will become a European Union member in two years, making it
the first new country to join the bloc since 2007 and offering hope
to other nations from the former Yugoslavia seeking to join.
(AP, 6/24/11)
2011 Jul 18, Former Croatian PM
Ivo Sanader was extradited home from Austria to face charges of
corruption.
(SFC, 7/19/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 20, Serbia arrested
Goran Hadzic (52), the last major war crimes suspect from the 1990s
Yugoslav conflicts, closing what its president called a "burdensome"
page in the country's history. The Croatian Serb wartime leader had
been indicted in 2004 for crimes against humanity during the 1991-95
Croatian war.
(Reuters, 7/20/11)
2011 Nov 2, Josip Boljkovac
(89), Croatia's former interior minister (1990-1991), was arrested
over accusations that he ordered mass killings of anti-communists
soon after the end of World War II. He and two other former ranking
Croatian officials have been under investigation for alleged murders
in 1945 and 1946 of soldiers and sympathizers of Croatia's Ustasha
Nazi puppet regime that ruled during the war.
(AP, 11/2/11)
2011 Nov 7, Officials from
Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, announced plans for a
donors' conference to be held next year and raise the money needed
to implement a five-year plan designed to close down all migrant
centers and provide housing for some 74,000 people.
(AP, 11/7/11)
2011 Nov 28, Yugoslavia's last
PM Ante Markovic (87) died in Zagreb, Croatia. He tried to prevent
the former country's bloody breakup in the 1990s.
(AP, 11/28/11)
2011 Dec 4, Croatians voted in
a parliamentary election expected to unseat long-dominant
conservatives and empower a center-left coalition. The vote for
151-seat parliament pits the governing center-right Croatian
Democratic Union, or HDZ, against a coalition of left-leaning
parties. The latter has led recent opinion polls.
(AP, 12/4/11)
2011 Dec 9, Croatia signed a
treaty to join the EU in 2013, a bittersweet milestone as the bloc
prepares to take on board a sluggish economy it will have to drag
along at the time of its worst crisis ever.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2012 Jan 22, Croatians voted in
a referendum on whether to join the European Union. 68% approved the
referendum with a turnout of 47% of eligible voters. Croatia signed
an EU accession treaty last year and is on track to become a member
in July 2013.
(AP, 1/22/12)(SFC, 1/23/12, p.A2)
2012 Jun 23, In Croatia at
least eight Czech tourists were killed and 44 injured when a bus
crashed and overturned on a major highway near Gospic.
(AP, 6/23/12)
2012 Jun 26, A Serbian war
crimes court sentenced 14 former Serb soldiers to between four and
20 years in prison for the killing of 70 Croatian villagers in 1991,
some of whom were forced to walk through a minefield in Lovas as
human shields.
(AP, 6/26/12)
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