A former top Croatian official was jailed for five and a half years Thursday over the torture and killing of dozens of Serb civilians during the country's 1990s war of independence.
Tomislav Mercep was found guilty of tacitly approving the killing, illegal detention, inhuman treatment and looting of property of 52 ethnic Serbs by members of a unit under his authority, a Zagreb tribunal ruled.
The crimes were committed in late 1991 in the Zagreb region, as well as in Kutina and Pakracka Poljana, both in eastern Croatia.
Mercep, at the time an aide to the interior minister and the commander of the ministry reservists' unit, failed to prevent the crimes and thereby tacitly approved them, judge Zdravko Majerovic said, quoted by state-run HINA news agency.
The 63-year-old was intially charged with ordering the crimes.
Forty-three of his alleged victims died. Three are still reported missing while six survived the atrocities.
Among the victims was a Serb couple from Zagreb with a 12-year-old daughter, who were shot dead in cold blood in the capital in December 1991.
Mercep, whose trial opened in 2012, pleaded not guilty.
In 2005, a Zagreb court convicted five former interior ministry reservists, who had been under Mercep's command, of kidnapping, torturing and killing an unspecified number of Serbs in Pakracka Poljana.
According to local media reports, the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague had been investigating Mercep and transferred the evidence they gathered to Croatia.
The former Yugoslav republic's proclamation of independence in 1991 sparked a four-year war with rebel Serbs who opposed the move.
The country's ability to handle war crimes cases, notably those involving its own nationals, has been closely monitored by the European Union.
Croatia became the bloc's 28th member in 2013.
