Josip Boljkovac
Photo: Ronald Gorsic/Cropix
The 94 year old, Josip Boljkovac, was acquitted by the Zagreb County Court on Thursday 22 May of war crimes against civilians in the aftermath of WWII.
The 94-year old Boljkovac was accused that in the early May of 1945, as head of the Karlovac branch of the then Department of National Security (OZNA), which was the Tito-led Partisans’ security service, he had ordered the arrest and execution of 21 civilians from Duga Resa.
Judge Tomislav Jurisa handed down the Judgment, acquitting Boljkovac of the war crime while, in the same breath saying that “there is no doubt that the crime was committed but that there was no written order for the execution of the crime … not a single document leads to Boljkovac … it was simply a matter of crime committed by the system …which crimes have compromised the historically-affirmative antifascist battle…” reported Croatian HRT TV News 22 May 2014. The judge emphasised that Boljkovac was probably the last member of the WWII Partisan movement who has been processed for war crimes. “The court had a difficult task and we had to make sure that the whole burden of war crimes committed by members of the Partisan movement does not fall upon Josip Boljkovac, because that would be unjustified and impermissible in a democratic and civilised country such as Croatia …”.
The judge added that while “a certain degree of doubt about whether Boljkovac ordered the killing still exists, it is not enough to pronounce someone guilty”.
Anto Nobilo
Photo: Miro Soldic
Boljkovac’s attorney, Anto Nobilo, was happy with the judgment – why wouldn’t he be, he is and was a communist, and said that “this would have never have happened (prosecution of Boljkovac) had a former minister of internal affairs (meaning current leader of the leading opposition party HDZ, Tomislav Karamarko) not set his sights on becoming the leaders of the right-winged opposition and then organised masked special policemen, with a media entourage, to arrest a 92 year old man …that minister had abused his powers for political goals…”
Tomislav Karamarko
Photo: Anadolija
Tomislav Karamarko made a brief comment on Nobilo’s statement: “It would be flippant of me to comment on what Nobilo said, the good thing about this judgment is that in fact a system has been convicted.”
The State Attorney will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.
“Thus this is a legal scandal because the [victorious] Partisans were the liberators …” Nobilo was also found to comment.
So, as far as Anto Nobilo and the communists/antifascists are concerned one does not prosecute old people, especially if they came from “liberating” forces that Partisans refer to themselves as being!
Oh my goodness, the Nazi hunters, including Simon Wiesenthal Centre, are bound to die in shame for having kept friendly company with Anto Nobilo – a lawyer who evidently promotes the type of justice where old people should not face the courts and answer for their crimes; many old people have been hunted down and prosecuted for crimes relating to the Holocaust.
Andrija Artukovic 1986 extradition
to communist Yugoslavia
If we turn the clock back a few decades we realise that the same Ante Nobilo, a communist Yugoslavia deputy public prosecutor in Croatia, was at the helm of the prosecution for Holocaust crimes against Andrija Artukovic in 1986, who was at the time in the ripe old age of 89, suffering dementia and brought to Croatia from the USA under extradition orders. Artukovic was sentenced to death and died in prison in 1988 and his burial place, if there is one, is not to this day known as a matter of communist order of the time.
So this pathetic excuse for a lawyer, Anto Nobilo, who had made it his business in 1980’s to prosecute old people with dementia for war crimes associated with the WWII Independent State of Croatia, without any regard to their inability to defend themselves, would now like us to take pity upon his 94 year old client, Josip Boljkovac, a communist Yugoslavia operative, because he is old and ill – but does not suffer from Dementia!
To make things worse it was the same Anto Nobilo who firmly stated in November 2011 that he knows who committed the murders his client Boljkovac was charged with and he now has the gall to be happy with the court’s finding that the “communist system” murdered them! What happened to the evidence about the murderer he said he had?
A grave injustice has been served in Zagreb on Thursday to the victims of communist crimes, if not for Nobilo’s comments regarding Boljkovac’s age then surely because the testimonies of living people who testified seeing Boljkovac “in the vicinity of the 1945 murderous action and arrests of innocent people” seem to have not weighed as much in the court as “no documents presented” seem to have! It would have been just and reasonable to find that the communists have most likely destroyed any documents relevant to the orders for the execution of the murders in 1945.
The communist system was found guilty of committing the murders of innocent people and system simply does not and did not exist without people! Let’s pray that the Croatian Supreme Court will have the courage of seeing that truth and deliver a verdict, which takes into account the clandestine operations of destroying evidence that were a second skin to the communist system made up of people. Josip Boljkovac may not be found as guilty of the murders on appeal but he should, I believe, at least be found guilty of having the knowledge of the murders and, hence, being an accessory after the fact! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)
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Slippery slope decision. Does that mean that Jasenovac (1941-1945) can be justified using the same criteria? What was the prosecution, sleeping? Man, I’d love to have a peek at the presiding judge’s CV! Man alive!
Telepathic, Brankec – I’ve been researching the Judge’s CV a bit, still at it …
Ina you are a hero! the people of Republic Kosovo thanks you! if it was not for Croatian patriots like you that evil disgusting Serb controlled empire called Yugoslavia will not had disappeared and we will had all been forced by gunpoint to stay in the empire or that is what the Serbs though they could do…. I cried of happiness when I heard the news of Slovenian and Croatian indepedence and Bosnia followed I knew it was a question of time before Kosovo will rise up and we t…oo will get our freedoom. We in Kosovo got the same fate as Croatia our cities were born down by Serbs, our females raped , our children killed and our grandmothers had to run for their lifes but our brave men destroyed the enemy and he had to run for his life and the land was liberated and regonized by Croatia! Ina at the end of the day the victory belonged to the people of Croatia and Kosovo! my mother was crying when the guns of the Kosovo Liberation Army was close to our home I told her that she should be happy it was the sound of liberation!
Thank you, Amina Ali Ahmed – to have experienced the oppression in Yugoslavia and Serb-led control is to know utter despair. The truth always wins in the end!
I had those sleepless nights in the 1980s/90s when Yugoslav secret police was jailing our fathers and brothers I was demonstrating against the Yugoslav embassies as a child and was happy when the last ugly Yugoslav flag went down in Kosovo what a wonderful day that was! In 1998 I sold my jewelry so our men could buy the weapons to liberate us this shows nobody can stop the will of Croatia or Kosovo…… I remember those disgusting days when they forced us at the schools to sing for Yugoslavia and Serb leaders my children grew up in an independent Kosovo since 1999 where we are in control of own fate and proud to watch our own flag!
Freedom is so precious and such a joy, indeed, Amina Ali Ahmed
Another reason why Croatia has to get rid of this government as soon as possible and push through vigorous lustration laws.
Nobilo was and remains a Yugoslav fanatic.
His lies and constructions in his (subversive) defense of Blaskic were outright treason, the fruits of which Blaskic, Rajic, and Prlic et. al. had to bear the fruits of.
He is a traitor and a Belgrade loyalist.
That is why he keeps the company he keeps in this government.
Indeed, therealamericro, evidently, the Nobilos of this world are a curse worth fighting against with every fiber humanity has.
A dangerous precedent has come down in this Croatian court: the judge convicts a system of murder! This can only be done by communists! A system filled with evil murderous faces that blend into a thing, a system capable of murder in which, then, all its members must be murderers…
People made up the system, I see Red, that’s for sure!
Only in communist countries can the system provide for individuals to blame the system and not themselves for murder! A shocker!
A shocker indeed, Wilkinson. But today’s world may just be so good to stop this lunacy and injustice
Don’t believe in Boljkovac’s innocence for one second!
Yep, I know how you feel, Robert Rob – there’s plenty of evidence that supports your view.
Does this mean that we have been hunting Nazi war criminals illegally because it was not the individuals but the Nazi system that killed people.
I believe that this ruling also goes against the concept that soldiers must not follow illegal orders and that they can’t use “I was just following orders” as a defence.
And Zeljko, to put it further, system does not pull the trigger or draw a knife… well compared. Tito was at the head of the system, so where does that put him within this court judgement? The engine of the system that murdered… might as well cancel ICTY etc and annul all convictions if things were/are the way this judge sees them when it comes to war crimes …
I remember many years ago right after Croatian independence, the managers of the very prosper companies where running business down to the point where the companies became insolvent, and then, the same managers turn around and bought the same companies back for pennies and made millions $$.
So this time around, I can see very similar things happening in Croatia but on the larger scale involving the Milanovic Government. Everything that is happening right now re-politics, business, justice, un-justice, numerous provocations in Sabor etc. It is working against Croatian people, why?
The signs are all over, and in the context what happened to Croatia before (whether people like it or not) Serbia will rule Croatia all over again, they will be our best friend,,,,it is just matter of time, the Milanovic Government will make it happened.
Nothing wrong with reconciliation, I think rb, however it cannot happen until justice is done, not in reality even if a few at the top might shout it…the current government I think sees all that but being as they are they will continue working against the people who need closure through justice and that is a tragedy
Nothing wrong with reconciliation, Ina, but in the context of what is currently happening, if Serbia were to “rule over” Croatia again, it would be more like another Yugoslav system as opposed to real reconciliation. Proper reconciliation and living peacefully as neighbours cannot happen until they stop trying to whitewash or equalize the crimes of the Homeland war and within Yugoslavia, or until they fully distance themselves from the greater Serbia ideal. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t see Serbia taking steps politically, to create the pathway for a proper reconciliation. I can only hope that Croats get as fed up with SDP and any and all Yugonostalgics as much as we are, and as soon as possible.
Exactly what I meant, Kat – real reconciliation can only happen when criminals are treated as criminals and punished for their crimes, which will not happen under the SDP government that’s for sure
The judge says the system was to blame for the murders committed by person/s, and the system was the Communist Party. SDP was created from the remnants of the Communist Party and whose current leaders were all members of the Communist Party of Croatia. Therefore this judgement alludes to the current SDP leadership of being responsible for the killings perpetrated by the Communist led Partisan’s and UDBA.
And Zezevice, perhaps even some members of current government or their family members, ancestors, were the ones who executed the murders or were party/accessories to it even if through knowledge about them and not doing anything to stop and/or expose the crimes and yet this judge failed to address that, miserably…
One other thing that I find disturbing is that Josip Boljkovac was “After democratic reforms in Croatia he joined the Croatian Democratic Union and became the country’s first Minister of Internal Affairs.”
” In 2008, Boljkovac launched a bid to form a Josip Broz Tito Society, to celebrate the role of the former Yugoslav president”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Boljkovac
No wonder, Zeljko, things for progress of democracy in Croatia went hay-wired from the start with destructive and obstructive elements within it
…the only job that this (lawyer?) Ante Nobilo knows how is to be a traitor to the Croatian people! If the Serbian armies captured Zagreb and the whole of Croatia in 1991, Nobilo, Josipovic, Mesic, Milanovic et al. would have been EXECUTED by the Chetniks anyway as being useful IDIOTS!
If Croatia was a real country, then Milorad Pupovac, Vesna & Zoran Pusic, Veljko Djakula, Zeljko Jovanovic, Milanka Opacic would NEVER, NEVER been allowed to govern here!
At least the Serbians KILL their TRAITORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If, just one more time, the Croatian populace elects the above mentioned chetniks, then the Croatian nation deserves to be destroyed FOREVER! People that STUPID should NEVER be allowed to exist with power on this planet!
Hopefully, the Croatians will elect the HDZ this time!!!!!
Yep. Tempus Fugit, blood does run deep – let’s hope there will be more Croatian blood in the next generation/round of elected officials
Do you really want criminal organization to run the country,if that happens then god help us all.
Reblogged this on THE MARVELOUS MUMFORD and commented:
AND THE TRIAL WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSBLE OR NEARLY SO…UNDER THE COMMUNISTS!
Thank you for reblog, Jonathan – much appreciated
We both benefit! 🙂
Indeed! 😀
Yes’m!!!!
😀
What the hell? What sort of judgement is this? Croatians, get your shit together and start lustration because it’s the only thing that gives any hope of saving the country.
So does this bullshit judgement mean that if a policeman or soldier follows unlawful orders to murder, they can’t be held individually responsible and neither can the person who ordered the murder? Or what if someone murders without order, they’re not responsible either because it’s the system’s fault and not theirs? Or does it mean that the system as a whole is murderous, meaning anyone within the system or supporting it, is a murderer? If that’s the case, we have to lock up SDP as soon as possible, we can’t allow murders to roam the streets!
This opens up a terrible slippery slope that doesn’t make sense no matter which way you look at it. God help us. At this point in time, Croatia needs to just get rid of everyone in politics, courts and the media and start over.
A fresh start would be what the doctor ordered, Kat – start with lustration
Reblogged this on Rise of The West.
Thank you on reblog, Richard, much appreciated
Reblogged this on idealisticrebel and commented:
So much unnecessary killing. In a certain sense, we are all responsible. We must be willing to fight governments who disrespect the lives of their citizens. Hugs, Barbara
Thank you for the reblog, Barbara – and yes, we must fight those that disrespect live, couldn’t agree more
The system itself can do nothing without the people who adhere to it. In and of itself a system lies dormant. This is ridiculous! People are responsible for what happened, not a system! …Don’t get me started! This is blatant stupidity due to the lack of the backbone of a judge. Additionally, Age, mental capacity, etc, etc had no bearing upon what he did at the time and should hold no bearing for what he did at the time…he’s obviously gotten away with it way to long already. This may sound cold and callous, but were not his actions cold and callous at the time? Do we say, “Aw bless! He’s old. Let him get away with it?” Hell, no!…what about the innocent victims, their families, the generations that still weep for them? If they say, show compassion, then by all means. What do they say?
Well said, Kev – indeed age should play no role in whether someone is arrested for crimes or not and as far as I am concerned I would try them posthumously if it need be. The victims and their families deserve at least that
I couldn’t agree more.
😀 😀 😀
Yugoslav communists imposed system to murder innocent opponents, therefore they should be now punished regardless of how old one is or how long ago they committed the crime . Also, punish whole who still favours Yugoslav’s communist system.
I agree, Strogi!