page_title: Baćin massacre
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Baćin massacre / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Hrvatski: Spomen ploča poginulima i nestalima u Domovinskom ratu u selu Baćinu
context_page_description: The Baćin massacre was the killing of 83 civilians just outside the village of Baćin, near Hrvatska Dubica, committed by Croatian Serb paramilitaries. The killings took place on 21 October 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence. Most of the civilians were Croats, but they also included two ethnic Serbs, taken from Hrvatska Dubica, Baćin and the nearby village of Cerovljani. The civilians were killed in the area of Krečane, at the very bank of the Una River, and their bodies were left unburied for two weeks. Most of them were subsequently bulldozed into a shallow mass grave, while a number of the bodies were thrown into the river.
  The killings followed the takeover of Hrvatska Dubica and its immediate surroundings by the Serbian Autonomous Oblast Krajina and the Yugoslav People's Army following the withdrawal of the Croatian National Guard in mid-September, when the bulk of the civilian population left the area. The remaining Croat population in the area was either killed or expelled by November. A mass grave containing the bodies of 56 civilians killed in Baćin was uncovered in 1997, two years after Croatia recaptured the area.
context_section_description: All surviving Croat civilians were expelled from the area of Hrvatska Dubica on 20 November. At least 118 Croat and other non-Serb civilians were killed in Baćin and its vicinity by February 1992. By 1995, numerous Croat-owned houses in Hrvatska Dubica, all Croat-owned houses in Cerovljani and about half the Croat-owned houses in Baćin were torched, dynamited or otherwise destroyed. The Catholic churches in Hrvatska Dubica, Cerovljani and Baćin were destroyed, and the foundations of the church destroyed in Hrvatska Dubica were completely removed.
  The mass grave at Krečane near Baćin was discovered in 1997, two years after Croatian authorities recaptured the area in Operation Storm. The mass grave contained 56 bodies, 36 of which were identified. The remaining twenty were buried in a common grave at the Catholic cemetery in Hrvatska Dubica.
  The killings of the civilians taken from Hrvatska Dubica, Cerovljani and Baćin were included in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) trial of Milan Martić, and the trial of Slobodan Milošević. Martić, who coordinated the combat activities of SAO Krajina forces and the JNA with Colonel Dušan Smiljanić, the security head of the JNA 10th (Zagreb) Corps in the area of Hrvatska Kostajnica, was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role in an ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serbs in Croatia. The judgment identified 83 civilians—the 43 taken from Hrvatska Dubica, 10 from Cerovljani and approximately 30 from Baćin who were killed at Krečani on or about 21 October 1991. Milošević died in custody in March 2006 before a verdict could be reached.
  Croatian authorities prosecuted in absentia and convicted seven Croatian Serbs for killing of at least 75 persons in the Baćin massacre in 2013. Commanding officer of SAO Krajina TO in Dubica Milinko Janjetović, commander of SAO Krajina police in Dubica Momčilo Kovačević and two of their subordinates, Stevo Radunović and Veljko Radunović were sentenced to 20 years in prison each, and Stevan Dodoš was sentenced to 15 years in prison for organizing detention of the civilians and participation in their execution near Baćin. Head of the SAO Krajina civilian authorities in Dubica, Branko Dmitrović and the commander of SAO Krajina TO in Kostajnica, Slobodan Borojević, were sentenced to 15 years in prison each under the command responsibility for failing to prevent or punish the crime.
caption: A monument to Baćin residents killed during the Croatian War of Independence.
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