Zagreb: Former member of SAO Krajina paramilitary units sentenced to 12 years in prison for murder of Croatian civilian

Former member of the paramilitary military units of the self-proclaimed SAO (Serbian Autonomous Region) of Krajina, Dragutin Ćelap, was sentenced today in the first instance court in Zagreb to 12 years in prison for the murder of a Croatian civilian in July 1991 in the Gvozd area.

Ćelap was arrested in October 2024 and has been in pretrial detention since then, and he did not want to be brought to the announcement of the verdict, the Hina news agency reported.

The indictment charges 72-year-old Ćelap, former leader of the Independent Democratic Serbian Party in Topusko, with having shot and killed a then 50-year-old man while he was driving a tractor on July 17, 1991, together with now deceased men who were then 32 and 39 years old, as a member of paramilitary armed formations of the so-called SAO Krajina, in the village of Staro Selo Topusko in the Gvozde area.

During his arrest in 2024, police found and confiscated two guns in his home.

Meanwhile, the Croatian police filed a criminal complaint against him last year for a war crime from March 1992 on suspicion that, as a member of a paramilitary unit, the reconnaissance and sabotage platoon of the 19th Infantry Brigade of the Vrginmost TO, he killed a then 60-year-old civilian who was doing agricultural work in a field with a tractor in the village of Koritinja.