are you mad now?

Hoplite will continue his War Party line which depicts the locals as some sort of near civilized savages.

He'll never ever admit to the simple truth that people like Tuta were funded, supplied, trained, and promoted by the entire bevey of Humanitarian Warriors under Clinton. Racists like Hoppie refuse to accept the possibility that white men could ever committ war crimes.

See, Humanitarian Warriors, because they are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo pure and upstanding and only have the most lily white of motives, could never, ever committ any sort of crime. Please how could anyone possibly suggest such a awful thing ?

The merest hint that those noble Humanitarian Warriors could be at all responsible for the 1,100 murders and 1,300 'disapearances' in Kosovo is simply not on, good man.

and
don't ever accuse those Humanitarian Warriors of letting the KLA invade Macedonia, not very cricket you know

and
please don't suggest that cluster bombing TV studios is evidence of cowardly criminality

Please, don't suggest anything of the sort......for the Humanitarian Warriors are above all of the petty grisely tribesmen of the Balkans. They are noble and pure

No, quite the reverse.

Any idiot could figure that out, but then you're not just any idiot, are you.

Thanks for confirming my views regarding the Humanitarian Warrior lot once again by your artful dodge.

Thanks for proving that you've never comprehended anything I've ever posted and merely spend your time typing random thoughts that pop into your barren head.

You should keep with the second hand attacks, as flagging me is detrimental to the standing of your avatar.

Still got METHANE gas in your head,don't YA!!

Klintoon has you all MESSED UP in the head!!

Before the Croats and Muslims turned on each other in 1993, they had a seemingly good-ol'-time working together abusing and ethnically cleansing the Mostar's Serbian population.

What about justice for the Serbs who were genocided and ethnically cleansed from Mostar by both the Croats and Muslims?

http://www.suc.org/politics/war_crimes?report6/mostar.htlm :

18. The witness 445/94- 14 described in the first part of his statement the political circumstances prevailing in Mostar before the outbreak of the conflict and up to the time of his arrest.

He was employed with the police station in Mostar.

At the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 inter- ethnic tensions began clearly to mount. Emigres known to be members of the Ustashi movement flocked in from abroad. People were removed from various positions and persons of Croat nationality were appointed to the majority of important posts. Earlier the Croats had set up a training centre on the island of Pag where they prepared personnel not only for police work but also for all other state administration agencies.

In January 1992 they started blowing up Serb-owned businesses. They blew up the cafes of Milan Kovacevic, Jovan Kukavac and of many others.

On April 3 or 4, 1992, a tank truck full of explosives was placed in front of the "North Camp" barracks and remotely activated. The blast demolished the barracks and all the buildings in the settlement of Zaluk. One soldier and three civilians were killed. Immediately afterwards, on April 6, Croats started shelling the barracks and the entire neighbourhood from artillery from the area of Listica, having previously evicted all Croats from the area. [That's what I feel some of these refugee movements are about - removing your ethnic kin to safety before you abuse the town - I think that's what the Albanians have done in Northern Macedonia, as the woman, old people, and children were escorted to Kosovo (and cared for by western aid groups quite well) while man of the men fought and wrecked havoc and terror on the slavic and Roma populations and their properties within the area)]

This operation was organized by Dragan Nikolic, until then a crime technician in the Secretariat of the Interior of Mostar and his brother Pero, director of the "Plastika" enterprise in Mostar. Also participating were Miro Krtalic, a trucker from Mostar, Branko Jedvaj, a driver at "Autoprevoz" and others. The tank truck filled with explosives was the property of the "Novogradnja" enterprise from Listica.

When the army withdrew, the persecution of the Serbs began. They were mostly arrested by Croats, some were killed, and the Moslems played a secondary role in all that.

In connection with his arrest, the treatment of prisoners, the physical and mental torture they were subjected to, the persons who took the lead in torturing and inhumanely treating prisoners, the witness stated the following:

... I was arrested on May 4, 1992 and tied and taken to the building of the Faculty of Economics. They asked me to work for their police, which I refused. The chief of their police was Stipe Petrovic, formerly a traffic policeman. Then there were Andjelko Lakic, Josip Marcinko, Marko Buhac, Ilija Pervan, Jure Kraljevic from the vicinity of Imotsko, and others.

As of May 14,1992 I was at Celovina, held in the District Prison building. I would occasionally be taken and spent some time in prisons in Listica, Duvno, Grude, Ljubusko and "Lora" in Split.

People were taken to do hard labour from this prison and many of them would be beaten while working because the guards allowed their soldiers to beat the prisoners. Every day men totally black and blue from the beating returned from work.

I remember well how once they beat up Slavko Milosevic viciously, then poured oil on him and set him on fire.

Until July 5,1992 they often interrogated me, punching me with their fists, kicking me with boots and hitting me with baseball bats all the while and I often fell down. The first time they took me out of prison they blindfolded me and took me to Listica. On the way they stopped the vehicle every now and then and showed me to the public as a Chetnik duke. The people would spit on me, insult me and hit me. I could not see a thing because I was blindfolded.

In Listica they locked me up in a room at the police station and took the blindfold off. A Squipetar [An ALBANIAN!!!] who had been told that I had been in Pristina and that I had beaten and maltreated Squipetars presently came into the room. [Sounds like they (the police) told this to the "Squipetar" to give him extra hate incentive.] He beat me with a cable thicker than a police rubber club. He hit me on the head and all over the body.

I fainted from the blows and when I came to I saw that I was lying on a large table in the cellar of the police station. A doctor and a lady doctor, allegedly from Germany, [what be going on here with the German doctors - can anyone figure this out?] were standing by the table and they gave me injections in both shoulders and the pain soon abated. I have visible scars to remind me of this beating. The man who beat me was about 30 years old and about 180 cm. tall. I found out that he had an ice- cream parlor in Split and that he was the bodyguard of Ivica Pusic - the man in charge of the HVO police for western Herzegovina. Ivica Pusic was the chief instructor for the training of policemen on the island of Pag. He was strabismic in the right eye. He interrogated me in the building of the former Communal Committee. During the interrogation he called in two or three persons every now and then who mercilessly beat me and trampled me underfoot as I lay crumpled on the floor.

In addition to the beating, he forced me to swallow lit cigarettes. And even more terrible than this was when Ivica tied my bare feet and hands to some chairs and lashed my upturned palms and the soles of my feet viciously with a cable. The soles of my feet were swollen so badly that I could not stand.

During these interrogations Ivica and his helpers would handcuff me to a central heating installation pipe under the ceiling. There were two pipes running parallel and he would handcuff each of my wrists to one of the pipes and I hung there crucified thus. Before that he would strip me naked and suspend some iron object from my penis; the object forked out two ways at an angle of 90 degrees and kept my legs spread apart and its weight pulled me downwards. Every move caused me excruciating pain in the genitals and stomach. I would be suspended thus for three to four hours and he would come later and interrogate me again.

My left shoulder was dislocated because of the weight of my body as I hung there, and I cannot move it normally to this day. In this period also Ivica in person sent me flying into a corner with a classic karate chop, turning and kicking me with his foot in the chest twice and breaking my ribs.

The deformation in my chest is still clearly visible and also the scars on my left arm above the elbow. The middle finger of my left hand, its first phalanx was broken.

Ivica and his team knocked out all of my upper teeth with their blows and of others only fragments were left and I had to have them extracted later, and am now wearing a denture. They knocked out four teeth in the left side of my lower jaw, and the entire lower jaw shifted rightward in relation to the upper one so that I could not close my mouth properly and even today I am unable to articulate a number of words.

They took me to Duvno to a room where they showed me 9 disfigured people. They were all wearing military uniforms, they were bloody, their faces deformed. They were maimed to such an extent that their arms and legs could not be made out, as if they were not human beings at all. They told me that they were all YPA officers. They demanded from me to see whether I knew anyone of them. I could not recognize any of them and I told them so.

I saw many incarcerated Serbs in this building in Duvno, which, judging by the desks was a school, and I realized that they were being beaten for I could hear them screaming and crying out in pain all the time.

The next day they took me to the "Lora" military prison in Split where they interrogated me; they also interrogated me in Mostar, in the wine cellar at Ljubuski and then I was returned to prison in Mostar.

In the beginning of August, as I was cleaning the prison cells, they brought a young man, cut off both his ears before my very eyes and then viciously kicked him and pounded him with baseball bats and smashed in his skull spilling his brains. They trampled on him for at least half an hour more as he lay there, already dead. The lad was killed by members of their police wearing uniforms, and the surname of one of them was Krtalic, from Dracevica near Mostar.I do not know his name, he was about 25 years old, of medium height, well built. I remember him well because he always brought a dog, an Alsatian to the prison.

Many times when I went cleaning the cells I found dead bodies and the fresh blood in the cells indicated that it had happened overnight.

When I was released from prison, people by the surname of Ljepava from Trebinje came to visit me and showed me the picture of their son, a lad about twenty, who they knew had been in Celovina prison and they asked me if I knew anything about him. I believe that the youth who had been killed before my very eyes could have been their son.

In my estimate there could have been some 650 Serbs incarcerated at Celovina. There were also women there.

After the ordeal that I have gone through my physical and mental health is gravely impaired. I lost over 30 kilograms in weight in prison. I also got diabetes.

When I was in Celovina they took me to watch the demolishing of the Serbian Orthodox Church at Bjelusine near Mostar.

Here is what LORA was, prison is an euphemism. Article from Croatian press

Lora – New Evidence of Atrocities

The testimonies of military police officers Mario Barisic and Milorad Paic regarding the torture and murders of Montenegrin reservist prisoners in the military prison at Lora in Split have resparked interest in the events which took place there in 1992 and 1993
      The testimonies of military police officers Mario Barisic and Milorad Paic regarding the torture and murders of Montenegrin reservist prisoners in the military prison at Lora in Split have resparked interest in the events which took place there in 1992 and 1993. Original reports of these events involving police officers were even submitted to the late President Tudjman in 1994. Barisic and Paic have recently given their statements to the Criminal Department of the 73rd Division of the Military Police, which is currently conducting a preliminary investigation under the orders of the Split district attorney´s office. The DA decided in October 2000 to reopen the case of crimes at Lora after receiving new documentation and evidence from the Dalmatian Committee for Human Rights. This evidence included the horrible testimonies by three new witnesses, M.K. and the Tripkovic brothers. Human Rights Committee President Tonci Majic stated that it is evident that the testimonies of the military police officers completely corroborate the documents and witnesses statements of former prisoners in Lora, documents which are in the possession of the Croatian justice system. Tonci Majic (50) is a former journalist, contributor to the Slovenian media and has been involved in human rights issues for various non-governmental organizations for over nine years. He is the founder of the Dalmatian Council of Solidarity. When he decided to deal solely with human rights issues, in 1993, he and a number of other like-minded individuals founded the Dalmatian Committee for Human Rights. Majic is well known for is uncompromised attempts to protect citizens of non-Croatian nationality, who from 1992 to 1994, were massively evicted from their apartments in Split with the assistance of the military police. Majic himself was seriously injured during one eviction, and together with a team from Swiss Television, he was imprisoned in the military prison at Lora.
  Open Letter to Minister Rados

   NACIONAL: Why has there been so much discussion in the public in recent days concerning the reports and documents of the Dalmatian Committee for Human Rights?
   Last year in October we decided that it was time to hand over the evidence, witness statements and documents concerning the crimes that took place in Lora which we´ve had for years, to the County district attorney. The DA´s office informed the public that based on the testimonies made by three citizens of Serbian nationality, which were not previously known, the “Lora case” was to be reopened. In early February, the Dalmatian Committee forwarded an open letter to Defense Minister Jozo Rados. We requested that he finally replace General Mate Lausic, commander of the military police, who was also commander in the time that the military police was abusing, torturing and killing people of the “wrong nationality” in the prison at Lora. If these prisoners were lucky and survived, they left the Lora prison 100% handicapped. We also submitted to the DA the testimony by our fellow citizen Djordje Katic and his photographs showing the serious injuries he received during his time at Lora for no apparent reason. Today, Katic lives in Australia on an Australian pension for the handicapped.
NACIONAL: Why is General Lausic considered to be responsible for the crimes committed at Lora?
   One of the prisoners from Lora refused to testify because the same man, who was in command of the military police both then and now, permitted his torture and the evil abuses to take place. These events took place between 1992 and 1994, and perhaps even to 1996. We thus realized that General Lausic should no longer be in this position which he dishonored, nor should he be in the armed forces any longer. We wrote to Minister Rados that the humiliation, beatings and murders committed by the military police under the command of General Lausic were all a part of the policies of terror and persecution, which was a brutal part of ethnic cleansing, and an integral part of the official Croatian policies. Rados has not distanced himself from such policies. For over a month, we have not received any response from him. Lausic´s position is so undefendable that the minister is collecting negative points by tying his fate to a man who should not only be fired, but should also be held responsible for war crimes. The documents we submitted prove that Mate Lausic´s responsibility through the chain of command is indisputable. The Dalmatian Committee has spoken with several witnesses, but what is particularly encouraging to me is that among those witnesses who came to us were members of the military police. I cannot reveal their identities. Their statements, though, directly confirm that which was stated in the witness testimonies of the surviving Lora prisoners. They also added certain details. After the statements by Mario Barisic and others, it appears that the most horrible and most unbelievable parts of the witness accounts are, in fact, completely accurate. The testimony by Gojko Tripkovic, a salesman from the village Pribilovci near Capljina who was taken into custody at Lora on April 12, 1992, outlined in detail the massacres of Montenegrin reservists, former members of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), who were taken prisoner on the southern battlefield. Military Police officers Barisic and Paic stated that these men were horribly massacred, and that their torturers bragged about how no international organizations had the victims listed on the lists of prisoners.

  Cruel Dujic

      Then 50 years old, in 1993 Gavrilo Tripkovic testified in Belgrade after he was traded in Nemetin. He testified that virtually all of the Montenegrin reservists had had their ears cut off, some had their eyes cut out, and that they were forced to walk around with broken arms and legs. Gavrilo was brought to Lora from the prison in Metkovic together with his brother Damjan, Drago Vujovic, Dusan Bulato and Rusko Bekan. He and his brother were captured and imprisoned in Herzegovina, and passed through a total of nine Croatian prisons. He testified of the blows he received from masters of martial arts, of beating with baseball bats, of being drenched with cold water, of living in a cell on “Block C” or the block of death, of starving, of drinking his own urine instead of water and being forced to eat his own feces, of being attached to an induction machine, of being forced to engage in sexual intercourse. “We were forced to suck on one another´s sexual organs”, stated Tripkovic. He also described the case of an orthodox priest, Zoran Perkovic, who was serving in Kupres, on whom the remaining prisoners were forced to lie upon naked. When I first read of this incident in 1996, in Paris, it seemed unbelievable. “One evening, about midnight, Tomo Dujic, who was particularly out to get me, took me out of my cell into another room. There I saw five men dressed in the standard JNA uniforms. By their speech, I concluded that they were Montenegrin. All of them had had their ears cut off, I think that only one man had one ear left. Some of them had their eyes cut out, and others were having their eyes cut out before me. I remember that one of the torturers stabbed one in the tongue and pushed on the knife, cutting his tongue off.”


  Looking for the Chetniks


      This detail was confirmed by the testimonies of the military police officers. But the descriptions of bloody liquidations of the Montenegrin reservists that had their heads cut off, the role of the prison warden Tomislav Dujic, his wife and a certain Andjelko, seemed crazy when I first read of them in 1996 in Paris in a report I received from a representative of an international organization. I thought that these were testimonies, alongside truthful and easily corroborated details, given under the influence of Yugoslav propaganda, which were given after prisoner exchanges, with a few extra details thrown in which had not really happened. However, these horrible tales of torture and abuse were never used by the Milosevic propaganda, and I later concluded that this was not the case. This portion of the Tripkovic testimony, which was in the Amnesty International report in 1993, is now for the first time being published in Nacional, for after the testimonies of the military police officers, it is evident that these accounts are correct. “One of the Montenegrins did not have his eyes cut out, so that he could see what was happening, then they began to cut their throats, one by one. They cut their heads off while holding them by the hair. Each one of them had their heads cut off from their bodies”, testified Tripkovic about one of the most horrific scenes I have ever read. Both Tripkovic brothers are alive, living in Serbia today. The person who gave me these documents has spoken with them, and even tried to assure them humanitarian aid, because they live in very poor conditions. One brother lives in Belgrade or its surroundings, the other in another town near the Macedonian border. They do not want to see each other, because while they were in Lora, they were forced to perform sexual acts on one another.
NACIONAL: In all of these testimonies, the name of the prison warden, Tomislav Dujic, has come up. Who is he?
   Tomo Dujic, is originally from Vukovar and he only barely escaped the city after its fall. He is recorded in many of the documents due to his brutality. The 1993 Amnesty International documents refer particularly to this. We have no knowledge as to his current whereabouts. The district attorney´s office certainly has much more information about the torturers than we do. Amnesty outlines the crimes of Tomo Dujic and several other soldiers who, at that time, were not ready to be named. The reports also refer to the articles in the Statute of the International Court which Dujic and his fellow soldiers violated, emphasizing article 7 which states that those who planned, prepared or executed crimes are also responsible for them. That is enough to declare that General Mate Lausic, commander of the military police, is also responsible. Horrible things happened at Lora. Now Viro is quiet. If the testimonies concerning Dujic and the others are true, then the only person crueler than he was, is Tanja, the woman he lived with. Gavrilo Tripkovic testified that she also tortured and beat the prisoners and that she derived pleasure from those acts. “She enjoyed asked prisoners if they ‘wanted pussy´, and then kicked them hard in the groin, after which they would be forced to spread their legs wide open.” I expect that the Lora case will end with a massive trial.
NACIONAL: Are there other testimonies of sexual abuse?
   Almost all of the testimonies include such details. In the Split military police and among the guards at the Lora prison, there were many sexually perverse individuals. Gavrilo Tripkovic described perhaps the most awful torture, ‘Looking for the Chetniks´. “One day, warden Tomo Dujic took me out of my cell and told me that he had to ‘look for the Chetniks – Seselj and Milosevic´, because they had entered me. He ordered me to lie down, and then he put red rubber gloves on his hands which went up to his elbows. He stuck his arm up my anus and began to pull on my internal organs. He caused me excruciating pains and a lot of bleeding, until I blacked out.” Dujic did this to Tripkovic several times, this was perverse sexual abuse.


  Sardelic´s Murder

   NACIONAL: Has the Dalmatian Committee collected new evidence on the events in Lora?
   We submitted all the testimonies I obtained abroad to the district attorney. But we also collected new information by talking with people who were also at Lora, but up until now have been too afraid to talk about it. For now, considering that these people are from Split, I cannot tell you about their testimonies. We have left it for the district attorney to assess how they will use that information. Our evidence deals mostly with the period from 1992 to mid 1993, when the most brutal events took place. The murders of Nenad Knezevic, and engineer from Kastel, Gojko Bulovic, a lawyer from Split and Dalibor Sardelic took place in the second half of 1992. To date, no one has been held responsible for those murders. Even though the accused in the Sardelic murder have been on trial since 1997. With the Sardelic case, it is believed that this was a showdown between two opposing groups in the Split underground, even though they all wore the same military police uniforms.
NACIONAL: On what grounds do you claim that the very highest levels of the nation´s administration knew about the events at Lora?
   The state administration, the government and a wide circle of individuals certainly knew what was going on at Lora by mid 1992. Special UN Delegate Tadeusz Mazowiecki reported in a UN report dated November 17, 1992 about the torture of Serbs in Lora. That document was in the possession of the Croatian Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry, and certainly the head of state also read it.

  Kevina Pit

      Further reports on the torture were published by Helsinki Watch and Amnesty International in September 1993. The book “The War we Never Wanted”, written by former Foreign Affairs Minister Davorin Rudolf, it is evident that a relative of one of the Lora prisoners contacted him, and that he intervened and in fact, informed the highest state leadership. He also informed Gojko Susak, and Franjo Greguric, who today tries to justify the situation saying that the premier cannot possibly know of all the events which take place in every military base in the country. Perhaps not in every base, but Lora was a special case which Greguric definitely knew about. The state administration, if nothing else, at least knew of the events at Lora from the newspapers. The “D.K. Case”, or Djordje Katic, from Split, was published in detail in Slobodna Dalmacija in 1992. Zvonimir Krstulic described in minute detail the five day torture period of Djordje Katic. In the end of August, 1992, with no warrant for his arrest, Djordje Katic, a Serbian who was a tax inspector, was taken from his apartment in Split. All of the prisoners were hooked up to inductive telephones and tortured by electricity, the cables were attached to their ears and genitals. Katic testified that he constantly beaten and forced to bark like a dog. He stated that he was held in a cell without light. Already the first evening he realized why there was no light in his cell. People even came into the prison from outside the prison to participate in beating the prisoners. Katic specified the names and nicknames of those who were beating him. He also mentioned the names of other prisoners. The DA´s office knows all this. Over the weekends, dozens of people disappeared and were taken to Lora, at one time, there were even a hundred. The family members of those who disappeared came to us panicked, not knowing where their loved ones had ended up.

NACIONAL: Are there systematized documents about the crimes in Lora?

   We don´t have any written trace of it, but we have testimonies of the prisoners who claimed that their torturers threatened to throw them in the well known Kevina pit in the Dalmatian foothills. The military police officers also spoke of this, when in 1994 they tried to convince the state administration of what had already been going on for two years. We can assume that the bodies are in Kevina pit or were disposed of deep in the sea. Who is responsible for these crimes should come out in the investigation. However, it is well known who the commanders of the Lora prison were, Tomislav Dujic and his deputy Tonci Vrkic. It is known that the commander of the 72nd Company was Zdravko Galic, his deputy Tvrtko Pasalic, and that Mihael Budimir took over Galic´s post. Commander of the 73rd Company of the military police, which was formed in 1993, was Zeljko Maglov. We are primarily interested in the responsibility of Commander of the Military Police, Mate Lausic, and his deputies Marijan Biskic and Ante Gugic, then the entire command structure of the 72nd Company. The state leadership knew about the liquidations in Lora, and President Tudjman and Minister Susak even promoted Lausic. Obviously, he conducted his job, the implementation of ethnic cleansing, very well.

What has been done since that article you posted was published in the Croatian press - anything significant?

In my post, April 6th is the date when the Croats started shelling the barracks and neighborhood of the Bosnian town (from which the Croats had been carefully evicted, but the Serbs remained). Was that day, which you mentioned earlier, expressly chosen to begin the shelling, because, as you can see incidents were already happening before this, but probably not on this scale?

I wonder how much of this eviction to save a particular ethnic group as they (of the same ethnic group) are setting in motion their ultimate plan to attack a town or towns has been described as "ethnic cleansing" being done by the remainees in those towns? For example, poster LenS often does hits-and-run posts when crimes/ethnic cleansing against Serbs in the Krajina region is mentioned. He claims that Serbs were ethnically cleansing that area of Croats first. Yet, do you know what the make-up of the Krajina was before the war - wasn't it predominately Serbian? And could the Croats, who were preparing, for some while at least, before their planned assault on the Krajina, have encouraged their ethnic kin to leave in the months before the attack?

Can you find any explanation for the two German doctors giving the tortured Serb injections to relieve his shoulder pain? Were Germans/German government advising/watching the Croats in the war? I think maybe they were, yet they, up close aren't so devoid of mercy as the Croats here are. That is one of the top 10 most astounding things for me in learning about the Balkans - that the Croats have such unlimited capacity to torture and are DEVOID OF MERCY.

Can you find any explanation for the two German doctors giving the tortured Serb injections to relieve his shoulder pain? Were Germans/German government advising/watching the Croats in the war?

it might be as well that they were Croatian doctors working in Germany and temporarily on leave there. Locals say "he is from Germany" but it does not mean he is necessarily German.

Germany provided Croatia with East -German weapons ( breach of UN embargo) trainers for Secret Service and military, diplomatic blanket. Germany wated to get rid of Americans on its soil. By opening of Balkan Pandora's box the goal was closer.

Some news today on the Lora prison. But they really sanitize the report and downplay the numbers "at least two Serbs", don't they. I could say - "at least two" people were killed in the WTC attacks and be factually correct. These mainstream articles will always highlight allegations of rape against the Serbs, but has the AP ever mentioned the perverse homosexual torture that the Croats (and Mujahedeen in Bosnia) did against POWs and Serb civilians.

WIRE: 09/28/2001 1:36 pm ET

Six former military officials arrested on war crimes charges

The Associated Press

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) Police said Friday they have arrested six former military officials on suspicion that they tortured and killed ethnic Serb prisoners during Croatia's 1991 war for independence.

The suspects, who were not identified, were arrested late Thursday in the southern coastal city of Split, police said in a report. The arrests came after investigations by a district court indicated their alleged involvement in the fatal beatings of at least two Serbs in the military prison Lora in Split during 1992.

Two other men, also suspected of involvement in the murders, remain at large.

Croatian media have long speculated that ethnic Serbs suspected of subversive activities were beaten and killed during a minority Serb rebellion against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

The nationalist government of the late President Franjo Tudjman often gave amnesty to Croat war crimes suspects and attempted to cover up crimes committed during the conflict.

The arrests reflect a shift in policy by the new reform-minded government, which pledged to prosecute all war crimes soon after it ousted the nationalists from power almost two years ago.

On Wednesday, four former policemen were indicted on charges that they captured six Yugoslav army reservists and killed them in a woods on the outskirts of Bjelovar, some 45 miles east of the capital, Zagreb.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.