here - Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo

framework for the implementation of such mechanisms, in practice, the Higher Court in Belgrade
does not use these mechanisms to a sufficient degree.
1.3. Tenja II 49
During 2012, the Higher Court in Belgrade conducted proceedings against Božo Vidaković and
Žarko Čubrilo, who were accused of a war crime against prisoners of war 50 and a war crime
against the civilian population. 51 During the four trial days held in 2012 eight witnesses were
heard.
Course of proceedings
The TRZ, 52 in its indictment brought on 22 June 2012, 53 charged Božo Vidaković, in his capacity
as commander of the 4 th company of the Tenja TO, and Žarko Čubrilo, as a member of the Tenja
TO, with the commission of a war crime against a prisoner of war and 18 civilians, between 7
July and the end of August 1991, on the territory of the municipality of Tenja (RH).
Božo Vidaković is charged that on 7 August 1991 in Tenja, he murdered of a prisoner of war,
Đuro Kiš, a member of the MUP of the RH. The accused allegedly took the victim out of the TO
HQ, made him walk, with his hands tied with a barbed wire, to the ‘Partizan’ movie theater and
shot him dead in the hallway of the building. The indictment further alleges that between 7 July
and the end of August 1991 in Tenja, the accused unlawfully confined seven Croatian civilians –
Marija and Marko Knežević, Manda Banović, Franjo Fuček, Nedeljko, Elizabeta and Andrija
Gotovac – in the house of Pero Ćosić and held them there until the end of August. He then he put
them in a white van and took them to an unknown destination, after which they disappeared
without trace until February 1992, when witness Đoko Bekić recognized the bodies of Nedeljko,
Elizabeta and Andrija Gotovac among bodies that had been found in a field behind Branko
Radičević Street in Tenja, and the bodies of the other victims were found and exhumed from a
grave at Betin Dvor on 26 February 1998.
Žarko Čubrilo is charged with the unlawful detention and murder of 11 Croatian civilians in mid-
July 1991. Allegedly, with the assistance of Jovo Ličina and Savo Jovanović, members of the
49 K-Po2 -1/12.
50 Article 144 (1) and Article142 (1) of the KZ of FRY.
51 This case was transferred to the Republic of Serbia under the Agreement on Mutual Cooperation in the
Prosecution of Perpetrators of War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and Genocide, signed by the Office of the War
Crimes Prosecutor of the RS and the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Croatia.
52 Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor, Snežana Stanojković.
53 Full text of the indictments available at www.hlc-rdc.org.
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