Milica StojanovicBelgradeBIRNMarch 28, 202317:15Former Yugoslav People’s Army officer Dusan Loncar pleaded not guilty to ordering an attack on the Croatian village of Lovas in 1991 that left several civilians dead.
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The village of Lovas in Croatia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Panoramio/Slovas.
Dusan Loncar entered a not guilty plea at Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday, insisting that he did not issue an order to attack the Croatian village of Lovas in October 1991, causing civilian casualties.
“After 32 years [since the attack], I saw that order for the first time when my lawyer got the documents [from the court] after the preparatory hearing,” Loncar told the court.
“I do not feel responsible for the attack, nor did I order it,” he said.
He claimed that in October 1991, he was not actually the commander of the Yugoslav People’s Army’s Second Guards Brigade, which was allegedly involved in the crime, but its acting commander, and that he was only named commander in November that year.
According to the indictment, on October 9, 1991, Loncar “ordered an attack on the civilian population that resulted in the death of people”.
He is alleged to have issued an order directing his main forces to blockade the village and use artillery to attack the buildings, while auxiliary forces “clear the village of ZNG [Croatian National Guard] and MUP [Interior Ministry] members, as well as the hostile population”.
Loncar said he did not issue or even see the order, but he did not deny that the attack happened, claiming that “Lovas was a military garrison”.
The indictment names seven people as direct victims of the order, although the death toll in further violence in the days that followed was much higher.
Serbian forces, including Yugoslav People’s Army troops and paramilitaries, captured Lovas on October 10, 1991.
On October 17, they rounded up around 70 men from Lovas, aged 18 to 65, detained them and tortured some of them.
The next day, two members of Serbian forces were ordered to use the civilians as a human shield in a minefield, according to the indictment.
When they got to the minefield, members of the Dusan Silni (Dusan the Great) paramilitary unit told the civilians to walk in a line and check with their feet where the mines were.
When one man fell over, a mine exploded, and at the same time a number of soldiers started shooting at the Croatians.
Loncar said that the crimes that happened after the capture of Lovas were something that “no one should be proud of”, and that he “is ashamed for not being able to prevent it”.
He also claimed that a local Territorial Defence unit, although subordinate to him, “was doing what it wanted”.
Eight lower-level perpetrators have already been tried for the crime – Serb policemen, Territorial Defence fighters, Yugoslav People’s Army soldiers and members of the Dusan Silni paramilitary unit.
In November 2020, Belgrade Court of Appeals sentenced defendants Sasa Stojanovic to six years, Darko Peric and Radovan Vlajkovic to four years and Radisav Josipovic, Jovan Dimitrijevic and Zoran Kosijer to three years for involvement in the crime and killing 28 civilians.
Loncar testified at this trial that his superior gave him an order saying that his unit should enter the village of Lovas, but insisted that he did not give that order to his men.
He also told the court that he only found out about the killings in the minefield after they happened.
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