Branimir Glavas being sent for questioning by a Bosnian court, May 2009. Photo: EPA/Fehim Demir.
President Zoran Milanovic has stripped Branimir Glavas of his state decorations, according to a decision published on Wednesday in Croatia’s Official Gazette.
“Branimir Glavas is hereby stripped of the following decorations of the Republic of Croatia: the Order of Prince Trpimir with Collar and Danica, the Order of Prince Domagoj with Collar, the Order of Ban Jelacic, the Order of Ante Starcevic, the Order of the Croatian Trefoil, the Homeland War Memorial, and the Homeland Gratitude Memorial,” the decision states.
The decorations were revoked following a ruling by the High Criminal Court of Croatia, which made Glavas’s war crimes conviction final on June 10.
The court upheld a seven-year prison sentence for Glavas in the “Garage” and “Duct Tape” cases, finding that he had failed to prevent, and had directly ordered, the killing of civilians, their inhumane treatment and unlawful imprisonment in the eastern city of Osijek during the 1991 War of Independence.
According to the court, Glavas, then commander of the city’s defence, ordered members of the Croatian Army to arrest individual Serbs in Osijek. They were interrogated about their alleged involvement in the war and taken to the banks of the Drava River, where they were executed and their bodies thrown into the river. All the recovered bodies were found with their hands tied and their mouths sealed with tape.
The “Garage” case concerns the murder of Cedomir Vuckovic, who was tortured in a garage near the Osijek Defence Headquarters and forced to drink battery acid. The case might never have been investigated had Krunoslav Fehir, who witnessed the events at the age of 16, not come forward.
Gordana Getos Magdic, the former sabotage and reconnaissance platoon commander of the Osijek Operational Zone, was sentenced to four years in prison alongside Glavas, while platoon members Dino Kontic and Zdravko Dragic were each sentenced to three years.
That verdict, now upheld by the High Criminal Court, was delivered on October 27, 2023 following a retrial at Zagreb County Court.
At the first trial, in 2009, Glavas and the other defendants were sentenced to several years in prison but the final verdict was overturned by the Constitutional Court. By then, Glavas had already served most of his eight-year sentence in prisons in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he had fled before the original verdict was handed down.
In January 2015, the Constitutional Court quashed the final conviction and proceedings against Glavas and his co-defendants resumed in 2017. The retrial formally opened in October 2021.
Although Glavas was sentenced to seven years in prison in the latest trial, in 2023, he left the courtroom a free man. Judge Drazen Kevric explained that he had already served five years, two months and 27 days of his sentence.
Although he still has more than a year of his sentence left to serve, the court will decide how the remainder will be enforced. Following the final ruling issued two weeks ago, Glavas said he had no intention of fleeing to Bosnia again.
“I am not sure whether I will even apply for early release. I will decide that later. If I do not apply, they will still have trouble with me in prison. I am here in Osijek, and I have no intention of going anywhere,” Glavas told Hina news agency after the ruling was delivered.
In 2010, then President Ivo Josipovic stripped Glavas of his war decorations, citing acts “contrary to the legal order and moral principles in the Republic of Croatia”
But in 2021, Milanovic returned to Glavas his decorations and the rank of major general. Milanovic did so because of the Constitutional Court ruling in 2015 that had overturned his earlier conviction.
It is unclear what will now happen to Glavas’s rank.
