5.  The applicants live in Sisak.
6.  A report of 28 October 1991 drawn up by the Bosanski Šamac Police in Bosnia and Herzegovina indicated that the body of a man had been found on 27 October 1991 on the right bank of the river Sava. The body was identified as that of S.M., the applicants’ respective husband and father, because an identity card bearing that name was found on it. The autopsy carried out on the same day indicated that he had been shot in the head.
7.  In 1996 the United Nations Security Council established the United Nations Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (the “UNTAES”). On 15 January 1998 the UNTAES mandate ceased and the transfer of power to the Croatian authorities began.
8.  On 9 December 2002 Z.M., the victim’s wife, wrote to the Ministry of the Interior in Zagreb, alleging that on 23 September 1991 her husband had been taken away by men in black uniforms and then killed. Z.M., her two sons, R.M. and B.M., and two other residents of Novo Selo, I.D. and S.J., were direct eyewitnesses of the abduction of S.M.
9.  The Sisak police interviewed Z.M. on 19 December 2002. She told them that on 23 September 1991 four Croatian soldiers had driven in a white van to their house in Novo Selo, on the outskirts of the town of Sisak. Two men had remained in the van while two others had come into their courtyard. These two were Š. and B., both of whom were known to her son R.M., who had played pool with them and knew their names. They were from Rijeka and members of a Croatian Army unit stationed in Novo Selo, commanded by I.M. Her husband had come out of the house. The men had been armed and had placed her husband in the van and driven away. After about five weeks she had been informed by the police that her husband’s body had been found in the river Sava near Bosanski Šamac.
10.  On 7 January 2003 the Sisak police lodged a criminal complaint against a person or persons unknown for the killing of S.M. A police inquiry ensued. This inquiry was part of a broader inquiry into the killing of a number of persons of Serbian ethnic origin in the broader Sisak area and which resulted in the indictment of several individuals (see 37-41 below).
11.  On 11 July 2003 the police interviewed D.M., the victim’s other son, who confirmed his mother’s statement. He said that his brother R.M. had told him that Š. had died after the war.
12.  Between 28 July and 25 September 2003 the police interviewed eighteen former Croatian soldiers.
13.  I.D. said that on 23 September 2001 he had been on guard duty in front of the ammunition depot, some forty metres from the house of the M. family, together with S.J. They had seen a white van which had stopped in front of the M. family’s house. Three men dressed in camouflage uniforms and with balaclavas on their heads had got out of the van and taken S.M. away. Later on I.D. had heard that it was Š. and B. who had taken S.M. away. I.M. had been the commander of the Croatian Army unit stationed in Novo Selo whose members had taken the victim away in the van on 23 September 1991.
14.  S.J. confirmed that he had witnessed the taking of S.M. by two men, who had arrived in a white van with Rijeka licence plates, whilst the driver had stayed in the van. S.J. did not know the identity of those men since their faces had been masked. That same van had been there before and later had been parked in front of the fire station in Novo Selo.
15.  I.V.H. said that he had joined the second group of about twenty volunteers from Rijeka who had joined the Croatian Army and arrived in Sisak some time around 15 September 1991. Some of them had travelled by van. Immediately after their arrival in Novo Selo, the group had been divided into two subgroups. One comprised M.M., Lj.G., B.G., Z.H. and N.S. They had been stationed in the fire station, together with D.P., and had not gone to “positions”. I.V.H. could not tell what that group had actually been doing in Novo Selo. After about ten days they had returned to Rijeka but most of them had later gone back to Novo Selo together with further volunteers.
16.  I.V. said that he had joined the volunteers from Rijeka and that on 16 September 1991 a group of them had gone to Novo Selo. D.P. had been in charge of the Rijeka unit and had slept in the fire station, staying there during the day as well, but I.V. did not know what D.P. had done whilst there.
17.  Z.M. said that he had joined the volunteers from Rijeka and that on 21 September 1991 a group of them had gone to Novo Selo. They had travelled to Novo Selo in two vans and another vehicle. They had stayed in Novo Selo for twenty to thirty days.
18.  M.V. said that he had gone to Novo Selo together with about ten other volunteers in a light blue Citroen van. The Rijeka unit had been under the command of D.P. and N.S., and the commander of the “whole group” had been I.M. D.P., N.S., Z.H. and M.M. had been separated from the others and stationed in the fire station. The Citroen van had been parked in front of the fire station and driven by D.P. and the others who lodged there.
19.  D.S. said that he had gone with a group of volunteers from Rijeka to Novo Selo on 5 September 1991. They had travelled in a blue Citroen van which was a rented vehicle, and later on they had stayed with the Sisak Police. D.P. had been in charge of the Rijeka unit. D.P., N.S. and Z.H. had not gone to “positions”. D.S. had heard about so called “night actions” There had been rumours that some of those who were staying in the fire station had gone to one such action and had come back after two or three hours. N.S., D.P. and Z.H. had remained together and later on joined the Military Police.
20.  S.D. said that at the beginning of September 1991 he had gone with a group of volunteers which included Lj.G., N.S., D.P. and B.V. to Sisak in a white van. He could not tell which of the men from Rijeka had held the position of commander, but the most prominent men had been D.P. and N.S., otherwise known as Š. They had both been stationed in the fire station in Novo Selo, and had not gone on to “positions”. S.D. could not tell what those two men had actually been doing in Novo Selo.
21.  M.M. stated that in 1991 he had joined a group of volunteers from Rijeka. Some time about the end of July 1991 they had gone to Novo Selo in a white van displaying Rijeka licence plates. The van had been driven by N.S. There had been seven of them in the van, including N.S., Z.H., B.V., D.P. and two more persons the names of whom M.M. could not remember. M.M. could not tell whether someone was formally in command, but D.P. had been in charge of the Rijeka unit. After about a month M.M. had gone back to Rijeka and returned with new volunteers, so that they had two vehicles, a white Volkswagen van and a blue Citroen van, both with Rijeka licence plates. The vans had been driven by Lj.G., B.V., N.S. and Z.H.
22.  Z.M. said that he had been in the second group of the Rijeka volunteers who had gone to Novo Selo in autumn 1991. The group had included M.V., S.L., D.S., N.S., I.S., B.V., M.M., D.P., I.V.H. and others. D.P. and N.S. had both had a bad reputation because they had “behaved like Rambo”, had not gone to “positions” and spent all their time in Novo Selo.
23.  B.A. said that at the beginning of September 1991 he had travelled to Sisak with a group of volunteers from Rijeka in a Citroen van, driven by N.S., together with D.P. ‒ the informal commander of the group ‒ B.V., M.M. and another six people. After two weeks they had returned to Rijeka for a short break and then gone back to Sisak. The headquarters of the group had been the fire station in Novo Selo. D.P. had once told him that during his stay in Sisak “some ugly things had happened”, but had not mentioned any details. B.A. had heard rumours that some people had been taken from their homes.
24.  S.L. said that he had joined a group of volunteers in Rijeka and had travelled to Sisak together with seven others on 19 September 1991 in a Citroen van to Novo Selo. The van had been driven by his neighbour N.S. The leader of the group had been D.P. B.V. and D.S. had also been present.
25.  I.S. said that his relative N.S., otherwise known as Š., had contacted him at the end of August 1991 and asked him to join a group of volunteers. He had travelled to Sisak as part of a group of nine volunteers comprising M.M., B.G., D.S., B.A., B.V., Z.H. and D.P. in a Citroen van rented from the Kompas car-rental agency. The Rijeka unit was under the command of D.P. After returning to Rijeka, he had not gone back to Sisak.
26.  Lj.G. said that at the beginning of September 1991 he had been contacted by N.S., otherwise known as Š., who had asked whether he would join the volunteers in Sisak. Soon after that, a group of twenty to twenty‑five men had travelled to Sisak in two rented Citroen vans. The leader of the group was D.P. Lj.G. had been stationed in the fire station, had been in charge of procuring weapons and had often travelled to Zagreb. He usually went in the van in which they had travelled to Sisak, while the other van stayed in Novo Selo. He had heard rumours about people being taken and liquidated and the bodies of the murdered being found, but in his view about eighty per cent of those stories had been fabricated. He knew that on one occasion a civilian aged between fifty-five and sixty had been brought to the fire station. One of the soldiers under the command of I.M. had telephoned and said that he would bring along a “chetnik” for N.S. to butcher. Lj.G. did not know what had happened to that person but he assumed that he had been handed over to the police.
27.  Z.H. said that he had been a member of military and police formations during the Homeland war and had been stationed in Banovina, amongst other places. His commander there had been D.P. He did not want to say anything else about the war, stating that he was suffering from post‑traumatic stress disorder.
28.  On 25 September 2003 the police interviewed N.S., who said that he had been stationed in the fire station in Novo Selo but did not know anything about the killing of S.M. He had always been “on positions” whereas some others, such as M.M. and Lj.G. had organised the procurement of arms and equipment. He had not heard about the taking of any civilian but even if such things had happened, those civilians “had deserved it.” He maintained that even if something had happened at that time in that area, after so much time had passed “all that should not be opened up again or dug into”.
29.  On the same date the police interviewed B.V., who said that he had been stationed in the fire station in Novo Selo. He had heard rumours about arrests and liquidations of civilians but could not confirm that any of the soldiers from the Rijeka unit had participated in it. He said that M.G. and Š. “had not come to Novo Selo to participate in the defence [of Croatia] but had obviously been engaged in other activities”.
30.  On 30 September 2003 the Sisak police drew up a report in which it was stated that D.P. had told the police that he was not going to give any statement about the “Sisak case” because he had consulted his superiors who had told him not to say anything about it. The report also stated that others had said that D.P. was the informal commander of the Rijeka unit stationed in Novo Selo when S.M. was “taken and liquidated”. The report also stated that photographs of persons known as Š. and B. had been taken.
31.  On 2 December 2003 the police interviewed R.M., the second applicant, who said that on 23 September 1991 he had been at home with his brother and father whereas his mother had been at the neighbour’s. A white Volkswagen van with Rijeka licence plates had driven to their house and two men had come out of it dressed in camouflage uniforms whereas two other men had remained in the vehicle. R.M. had heard that the van had been driven by I.P. One of the men who had exited the van was big and tall about 1,90 centimetres. R.M. had heard the other man addressing him as B. The other’s face had been uncovered and R.M. recognised him as Š. He had good relations with Š. and had often seen him in the fire station as well as B. and had sometimes played pool with them. They had taken R.M.’s father with them and driven away. R.M. was shown eighteen photographs of the members of the Rijeka unit but he said that he did not know any of the persons on the photographs save for the person under number 1 for whom he said that he knew him but could not remember where from. The person under number 1 was N.S., also known as Š. R.M. told the police officers that he could recognise both B. and Š. if he saw them in person and in particular if he heard their voices.
32.  On 5 January 2005 the second applicant R.M. approached the Sisak police to enquire about the investigation into the killing of his father S.M. R.M. referred to his prior statement given to the police when R.M. had indicated Š. as one of the soldiers who had taken his father. R.M. also enquired whether Š had been detained. R.M. knew who Š. was and said that he would be able to recognise him because he had a characteristic face. At that time R.M. had also been a Croatian soldier. He also said that his friend M.O., a member of the special police, had told him that he had seen his father in “ORA”, a detention centre in Sisak, about three weeks after S.M. had been arrested. M.O. also said that it was not sure whether it was S.M. since he had been beaten.
33.  On 29 July 2005 the State Attorney’s Office issued a document concerning enquiries into the killings of civilians between 1991 and 1995. The document was addressed to the County State Attorney’s Offices, which were required to examine all of the information collected to date on the killings of civilians during that period and to concentrate their activities on identifying the perpetrators and gathering the relevant evidence in order to initiate criminal proceedings.
34.  On 9 October 2008 the State Attorney’s Office issued an instruction for implementation of the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure to the County State Attorney’s Offices, in which it stated that an inspection of their work had indicated two main problems: possible partiality of the persons involved in the pending proceedings as regards the ethnicity of the victims or the perpetrators; and the problem of trials in absentia. The instructions advocated impartial investigations of all war crimes, irrespective of the ethnicity of those involved, whether victims or perpetrators, and stressed the duties of those working for the State Attorney in that respect.
35.  The police again interviewed the victim’s wife and sons on 22 December 2008; they all repeated their prior statements. R.M. also said that the soldiers who had taken his father had had masked faces but that they had been addressing each other with the names Š. and B.
36.  The inquiry continued and in January 2009 S.J. was again interviewed. He repeated his prior statement (see paragraph 14 above).
37.  On 20 June 2011 the Sisak County Police lodged a criminal complaint against Đ.B., V.M. and D.B. on charges of war crimes against the civilian population. This included the killing of the applicant’s husband. On the same day Đ.B., Head of the Sisak Police Department in 1991 and 1992, V.M., police commander at the border territory of Sisak and Banovina in 1991 and 1992 and Deputy of Sisak Police Department, and D.B., a member of the “Wolves” Unit of the Croatian Army, were arrested.
38.  On an unspecified date the investigation was opened. On 13 July 2011 Đ.B. died.
39.  On 16 December 2011 the Osijek County State Attorney’s Office lodged an indictment against V.M. and D.B. at the Osijek County Court, alleging that they had been in command of the unit whose unknown members had committed a number of crimes against the civilian population between July 1991 and June 1992, including the killing of the applicant’s husband. They were charged with war crimes against the civilian population.
40.  On 9 December 2013 a first-instance judgment was delivered. V.M. was found guilty of war crimes against the civilian population in that he, in his capacity as “the commander of police forces in the broader area of Sisak and Banovina” and “Deputy Head of the Sisak Police”, had allowed the killings of persons of Serbian origin and had failed to undertake adequate measures to prevent such killings. The relevant part of the judgment concerning the applicant’s close relative reads:
“on 23 September 1991 at about 7.30 p.m. four members of the Sisak Reserve Police, wearing camouflage uniforms and grey uniforms and armed with automatic guns, arrived in a white Volkswagen van bearing Rijeka licence plates at the house at Janko Rupčić 8 in Novo Selo, which had been damaged the previous day by unidentified persons before using explosives. They searched the premises, arrested its owner S.M., took him in the van to an unknown destination and shot him dead; his body was found on 27 October 1991 on the right bank of the river Sava in Bosanski Šamac with gunshot wounds to the head.”
41.  On 10 June 2014 the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of V.M. and increased his sentence to ten years’ imprisonment.
42.  On 27 February 2006 the applicants brought a civil action against the State in the Sisak Municipal Court, seeking compensation in connection with the death of their close relative. The claim was dismissed on 3 May 2007 and was upheld on appeal by the Sisak County Court and the Supreme Court on 4 December 2009 and 27 April 2011 respectively. The national courts found that the claim had been submitted after the statutory limitation period had expired.
43.  A subsequent constitutional complaint lodged by the applicants was dismissed on 8 December 2011.
44.  Following the conviction of V.M., the applicants sought the re-opening of civil proceedings on 1 August 2014. On 6 February 2015 the Sisak Municipal Court accepted that request.