Operation Storm

In the summer 1995, Croatia carried out a large scale military operation called Oluja -- Storm -- the objective of which was to reclaim areas of Croatia held by rebel Serb forces. The operation officially lasted four days and effectively eliminated the wartime "Republika Srpska Krajina". It was the largest military operation in Europe since World War II.

Aftermath

In the days immediately following the military invasion, the Croatian Army rounded up all the male population (capable of bearing arms) in Knin and interned it at large buildings. In the town of Obrovac, on the other hand, the entire population had already left during the first day of "Storm" – when Croatian Radiotelevision reporters entered the town soon after the invasion, they found a single old man.

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The men in Knin were interned for about a week before they were released to their homes. After that, many of those people packed whatever they could and went on the road together with their families.

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In the following month (August 1995), the army retreated from the area, but was not immediately replaced with an adequate amount of police forces. Assorted murders and other unexplained deaths happened, which inspired fear in the people who had remained. Subsequently, most of them left for Serbia as well.

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There are also reports of war crimes committed mostly after the operation. A few notable cases included the murder of five (possibly six) Serb civilians in the hamlet of Grubori in the Plavno valley north of Knin on August 25, and the murder of 18 Serb civilians in the villages of Varivode, Gosici and two other hamlets in the former Sector South in the September of 1995. There were also numerous individual murders or murders of several people from the same household.

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By November 1995 the UN personnel had documented the deaths of more than 200 people in the area, and the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights recorded 715 grave sites also by November 1995. Veritas, a Serbian organization that collects information about the conflict in RSK, maintains a list of Serbian dead and missing persons, which includes 2,394 dead and missing people for the year of 1995.

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A large refugee column that was moving on the Glina-Dvor road during August 1995 was violated on two occasions: one report mentions Croatian army shelling of the column, and another mentions the Serbian military making way through the road without regard to civilians.

Related Topics:
Glina - Dvor

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Almost the entire Serb population of the area fled during and after "Storm". Some Croatian sources cite around 90,000 civilians and up to 50,000 soldiers. Some Serbian sources cite a total of 250,000. The ICTY prosecution estimates 150,000 - 200,000.

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The Croatian courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have both investigated the conduct of Croat army personnel and other individuals during this and related operations.

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The records of the Ministry of Justice indicate that the state prosecutors filed around 3,000 lawsuits against a total of 811 people following "Storm". Dozens of men were convicted to jail sentences (up to 20 years according to Croatian law), although actual murder convictions were scarce. Amnesty International has criticized the Croatian courts for inadequate investigations, failure to protect evidence as well as encouraging impunity for human rights violations.

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The prosecutors of the ICTY indicted several high-ranked officers, like generals Ante Gotovina and former chief of staff Janko Bobetko, for personal and command responsibility in alleged breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The charges related to the Medak pocket include planned mass murder as part of the operation; in "Flash" and "Storm" it's murders and destruction in the aftermath of each operation.

Related Topics:
ICTY - Ante Gotovina - Janko Bobetko - Geneva Conventions

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