Evidence about Katnić was sent to Milivoj

The Special State Prosecutor's Office (STP) received the first data and evidence from Croatia about wartime events in Dubrovnik, Cavtat and the surrounding area while he was in charge of it. Milivoje Katnić. In those documents, "Vijesti" learns, his name is also mentioned - that allegedly, as an officer of the JNA, during the aggression and siege in 1991 and 1992, he treated civilians of Croatian nationality inhumanely.

New evidence from Croatia recently arrived at the SDT again, and in addition, the special prosecutor Tanja Čolan Deretic with the SDT team, she also searched the evidence databases of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts from The Hague, where she found part of the data.

SDT has been able to use the huge database of the International Residual Mechanism since recently, i.e. since the amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), where, among other things, at the suggestion of the Supreme State Prosecutor Milorad Marković, incised to clearly include that the evidence presented before the International Criminal Court in The Hague is also used before the domestic judiciary.

The name of the former GST is mentioned in several places in the bases of the International Residual Mechanism, where witnesses describe him in their statements as a man who "sowed fear" in the JNA command, which at that time was dining in the Hotel "Makedonija" in Cavtat.

According to prosecutor Čolan Deretić, that information was sufficient to open an investigation against Katnić, who was heard on Wednesday in the SDT building, where he denied the accusations against him.

"The Special State Prosecutor's Office, after evaluating the evidence collected by the competent authorities of the Republic of Croatia and found by searching the evidence database of the Prosecutor's Office of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts, issued an order today to conduct an investigation against the defendant MK, due to the existence of a well-founded suspicion that he committed a criminal offense - a war crime against the civilian population," the SDT press release states.

According to these statements, the order charges him with inhumane treatment of certain Croatian civilians in the territory of Croatia, Municipality of Konavli, Cavtat, as an officer of the JNA, acting contrary to the provisions of the IV Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Time of War and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions nationality.

"By attacking them, torturing them, physically injuring them, and insulting human dignity and committing violence against their mental well-being," the SDT statement reads.

The former GST, who has been in custody since April 14 due to another investigation, was the assistant commander for legal affairs at the JNA command in Cavtat during the war in Croatia.

The data in which Katnić is mentioned that he may have acted inhumanely in Cavtat appeared at the end of 2011, when non-governmental organizations - Action for Human Rights (HRA) and the Center for Civic Education (CGO) with the help of the Fridrih Ebert Foundation organized a regional conference "War for peace - 20 years later" in memory of December 6, 1991, which was marked as the bloodiest day of the siege of Dubrovnik.

At that gathering, a former prisoner of the "Morinj" camp Methodius Prkacin publicly accused Katnić, then a judge of the Court of Appeal, that as a KOS officer he was allegedly responsible for arson and looting in Konavle, but also for the inhumane treatment and torture of Croats, whom he sent to the Morinj camp.

Katnić then reacted and claimed that "Prkačin lies about everything", and that "morality is not his strong point"...

"He didn't beat me, but he threatened me and blackmailed me. He told me: 'I will crush your head like a snake', and I told him: 'You can do it freely, when I can't defend myself, because I'm tied up'. While I was waiting for them to bring me into his office, they took out the prisoner Ivo Piplica, whom Katnić was interrogating. His face was so bloody that neither his eyes nor his mouth could be seen," recalled Prkačin at the beginning of January 2021, while he was waiting in the Basic Court in Podgorica to enter the hearing in the case of former inmates from Morinje against the state of Montenegro.

"Katnić managed everything in Cavtat, he radiated fear and terror in Konavle," claims Prkačin.

He also claimed that Katnić ordered the burning and destruction of abandoned houses, and extensive documentation on the devastation left by the JNA during the siege of Dubrovnik in the fall and winter of 1991 was photo-documented by Croatia in the war archive, which was handed over to the Tribunal in The Hague. .

Four years later, in response to Katnić's election as GST, HRA and CGO wrote to the then Supreme State Prosecutor Ivica Stanković that there are doubts about Katnić's work during the war.

In the databases of the International Residual Mechanism, there are also documents from the war archives of Croatia, where some residents of the then occupied Cavtat claim in their statements that "nothing could have been done without the knowledge of Katnić" in that place, as well as in the surrounding area, from the winter of 1991 until the following fall.

Katnić was also mentioned in statements by people who did not meet him personally, but had heard that he was the person who had all the intelligence data of the JNA and that without his knowledge it was impossible to enter or leave the occupied places...

In the war archive of Croatia, the testimony of a witness is particularly interesting Iva Palice from Močić, who "came out with a bloody head" from Katnić's office in December 1991...

The former GST has been in custody in Spuž since April 14 due to accusations that he was a member of a criminal organization formed by a former high-ranking police official Zoran Lazovic, whose members, according to the investigation order, became former special prosecutors Sasa Cadjenovic i Petar Lazović.

SDT scouted, then closed the case

After the claims of one of the leaders of the then Democratic Front, Nebojša Medojević, that Milivoje Katnić committed a war crime against the civilian population in Cavtat in 1991 and 1992, the SDT, which was headed by Katnić at the time, opened a case.

Special prosecutor Lidija Vukčević opened the investigation in May 2017, and then the case was closed because there was no evidence.

Medojević was sentenced to two months in prison by court decision because he refused to testify about the war crimes that he claimed Katnić committed during 1991 and 1992 in the area of ​​Cavtat and Konavalo.

Siege of Cavtat

By searching the database of the International Residual Mechanism, "Vijesti" also found a proclamation of the JNA command in Cavtat from November 7, 1991, where the inhabitants are threatened with repression.

"Do not allow incidents and provide full cooperation to the Committee of the Ministry of Health and the JNA command of Cavtat, because otherwise we will have to implement all available legal measures, including measures of repression," the proclamation reads.

In that document, it is stated that the JNA command has been based in the city for 20 days, that Cavtat has not suffered destruction, but that the place does not have electricity and water, but that it is being worked on...

"The JNA command will do everything to help you normalize your life and solve your life needs."