Human rights organizations Documenta – Centrr for Dealing with the Past from Zagreb, the Centre for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights from Osijek, and the Human Rights Action from Podgorica are protesting against the inaccurate statements made by Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Gordan Grlić-Radman.

When asked by the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti about what Croatia is willing to do to clarify the fate of 14 members of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) who died in the Split military prison “Lora,” the Minister stated that “everything related to events in the Lora prison has been prosecuted and sentenced, and it falls under the judicial process, which neither can nor needs to be commented on.”

The Minister is not correct. While final court rulings have confirmed that members of the 72nd Military Police Battalion of the Croatian Army unlawfully detained civilians and prisoners of war, subjected them to humiliation, psychological and physical abuse, torture, and corporal punishment—resulting in the deaths of some—the fact remains that not all crimes committed in Lora have been investigated or prosecuted. We emphasize the delayed legal action regarding the suffering of Montenegrin prisoners of war, despite testimonies confirming that crimes were committed against them.

Since 2007, the Split County State Attorney’s Office  has been investigating the fate of Montenegrin military reservists who were captured on the Herzegovina battlefield in 1992 and transferred to the Lora Military Investigation Center in Split. These 14 prisoners, known as the Nikšić-Šavnik group, were entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions and Croatian law. As prisoners of war, they should have been safeguarded from torture and killing under international humanitarian law. Their names are:

Radivoje Petković, Neđeljko Janković, Miljan Šušić, Ratko Simović, Duško Barović, Borivoje Zirojević, Dragoman Doknić, Radomir Vulić, Miloš Perunović, Ranko Vujović, Pavle Popović, Dragan Jakovljević, Luka Gazivoda, and Luka Adžić.

This case, concerning war crimes against prisoners of war, recently made progress when Split County State Attorney’s Office issued a request for international legal assistance, leading to the testimony of Veselin Bojović. Bojović, a survivor of the Lora prison, endured severe abuse there in 1992 and witnessed the torture and murder of other Montenegrin prisoners. However, he was only able to testify in Podgorica in February this year, following a request from Split County State Attorney’s Office.

In previous Lora cases, Tomislav Duić, the commander of the Lora Military Investigation Center, was convicted under command responsibility for the mistreatment and deaths of Croatian civilian detainees and Serbian prisoners of war. This same command responsibility could have been applied in the case of the Montenegrin prisoners, as numerous testimonies described the brutal torture of detainees in Lora. However, for unknown reasons, this has not happened.

Furthermore, we strongly reject Minister Grlić-Radman’s claim that questioning the prosecution of crimes in Lora represents a “narrative aimed at equating aggressors and victims.” The undisputed facts of the attack on Dubrovnik and JNA war crimes do not affect the facts of what happened in Lora. All war crimes must be documented and prosecuted, regardless of who committed them and who the victims were. This is a fundamental principle of the rule of law.

We regret that, instead of encouraging further prosecution of war crimes, the Minister’s statement appears to pressure judicial institutions. We call on Minister Grlić-Radman to act in accordance with his own statement that “Croatia’s longstanding and unchanged position is to resolve open issues with Montenegro through bilateral dialogue, in a spirit of good neighborly relations and based on international law.”

In this spirit, we urge the Minister to support the prosecution of all war crimes, including the investigation of crimes committed against the Nikšić-Šavnik group and other unresolved cases in Lora.