page_title: Lovas killings
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Lovas killings / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Photos of the victims of the Lovas massacre (October 1991).
context_page_description: The Lovas killings involved the killing of 70 Croat civilian residents of the village of Lovas between 10–18 October 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. The killings took place during and in the immediate aftermath of the occupation of the village by the Yugoslav People's Army supported by Croatian Serb forces and Dušan Silni paramilitaries on 10 October, two days after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. The occupation occurred during the Battle of Vukovar, as the JNA sought to consolidate its control over the area surrounding the city of Vukovar. The killings and abuse of the civilian population continued until 18 October, when troops guarding a group of civilians forced them to walk into a minefield at gunpoint and then opened fire upon them.
  After the Croatian Serb forces, the JNA and the paramilitaries established their control in the village, the Croat population was required to wear white armbands and mark their houses using white sheets. The church in Lovas was torched and 261 houses were looted and destroyed, while 1,341 civilians were forced to leave their homes.
context_section_description: In the immediate aftermath of the takeover of the village by the JNA and the paramilitaries, 1,341 civilians were forced to leave Lovas. The local Roman Catholic church of St. Michael was torched and 261 houses destroyed. In 1995, the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) and the gradual restoration of Croatian control in the region was agreed between Croatian authorities and Croatian Serbs in the region through the Erdut Agreement. United Nations experts began exhuming victims from a mass grave in Lovas on 2 June 1997. Sixty-eight bodies, including those of people killed in Lovas, were ultimately recovered from the mass grave, and ten more were recovered from nearby individual graves. The exhumed victims were reburied on 21 March 1998. A monument to the civilian victims was erected at the site of the mass grave on 27 May 1999, as was a cross to mark the location of the minefield. Another mass grave containing the bodies of six individuals was discovered in nearby Jelaš Forest, along with three individual graves. Similar to the other burial sites, the victims buried there included those killed in Lovas, as well as others, killed elsewhere in the area. Lovas was rebuilt after the war, but its population declined by one third compared to the pre-war level.
  The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) included war crimes against civilians and property committed in Lovas in October 1991 in its indictment of Milošević. Milošević's trial commenced on 12 February 2002, but Milošević died in March 2006 before a verdict could be reached.
  In 1994 and 2004 Croatian authorities filed two separate cases against a total of 17 persons, including Devetak, and indicted them on charges of genocide and war crimes committed against the civilian population of Lovas. The group included fifteen who were tried in absentia. In 2009, the process was split for Milan Tepavac and Ilija Vorkapić who were available to Croatian authorities, and once more a year later when Tepavac was judged not fit to stand trial. Vorkapić was acquitted in 2012.
  Serbian authorities charged four persons associated with former Croatian Serb authorities in the eastern Slavonia with war crimes committed in Lovas, consisting of four JNA officers and six former members of the Dušan Silni paramilitaries. The trial started in 2008. In 2012, the group was convicted of killing of 70 Croat civilians and sentenced to a total of 128 years in prison. Devetak received a prison term of 20 years, while the others received prison sentences ranging from four to fourteen years. However, in 2014, the court of appeals ordered a new trial.
  The ICTY also indicted Goran Hadžić, the Croatian Serb political leader in the eastern Slavonia region and head of the SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia government declared by the Croatian Serbs in the region at the time before it merged into the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The charges include war crimes of persecutions, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture, inhumane acts and cruel treatment, deportation, forcible transfer of population, wanton destruction and plunder of property. Hadžić died in July 2016, before his trial could be completed.
caption: Photos of victims of the Lovas killings
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