MASSACRE OF SERBS AT KORANA BRIDGE

BIJELJINA, SEPTEMBER 20 /SRNA/ – Croatian forces killed thirteen Serb reservists of the Yugoslav People's Army /JNA/ at the Korana Bridge near Karlovac on September 21, 1991.

Members of the Croatian Interior Ministry and the Croatian National Guard stopped two military trucks transporting active-duty and reserve JNA personnel from the Mekušje barracks to the Logorište barracks.

Following negotiations and assurances from the Croatian side that they would be released, the JNA reservists laid down their weapons. Immediately after their surrender, one group of prisoners, mostly active-duty JNA personnel, was taken to police premises.

A second group of 17 ethnic Serb soldiers, mostly reservists from the Kordun village of Krnjak, was escorted on foot across the Korana Bridge.

Once they reached the bridge, uniformed men wearing balaclavas appeared and opened fire. Thirteen of the 17 captured JNA reservists were killed, several with bladed weapons and most by automatic gunfire.

Of the four survivors, three escaped by jumping from the bridge, while the fourth managed to crawl out from beneath the bodies of his fellow soldiers during the night and flee.

In May 1992, the Karlovac District Prosecutor's Office indicted Mihajlo Hrastov, a member of a special police unit of the Karlovac Police Department, in connection with the killings.

Hrastov's lengthy trial began in 1992 before the Karlovac County Court, which acquitted him three times on the grounds that he had acted in "self-defense". He was eventually sentenced to four years in prison.

In determining the sentence, the court applied provisions allowing for a reduced penalty and considered the passage of time since the offense a significant mitigating circumstance, including its impact on the defendant's life, family and social relationships, professional career and health.

It was another in a series of lenient and largely symbolic penalties for crimes committed against Serbs by Croatian forces.