LONČAR v. CROATIA
Inadmissible
Dmitry Dedov;Elisabeth Steiner;Erik Møse;Julia Laffranque;Paulo Pinto De Albuquerque;Ksenija Turković
1. The applicants, Mr Dušan Lončar, Ms Miholjka Lončar and Mr Miloš Lončar, are Croatian nationals, who were born in 1951 and 1972 respectively. They all live in Vojnić and were represented before the Court by Ms S. Čanković, a lawyer practising in Zagreb. 2. The first applicant died on 1 June 2013. 3. The Croatian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik. 4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 5. During 1991 and 1992 Serbian paramilitary forces gained control over about a third of the territory of Croatia and proclaimed the “Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina” (Srpska autonomna oblast Krajina, hereinafter “Krajina”). At the beginning of August 1995 the Croatian authorities announced their intention to take military action with the aim of regaining control over “Krajina”. The operation was codenamed “Storm” and took place from 4 to 7 August 1995. Before the military action, the vast majority of the population of “Krajina” had fled Croatia. They went firstly to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later on many of them went to live in Serbia. Some returned to Croatia after the war. The number of people who fled is estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000. 6. In January 2005 the authorities learned that a close relative of the applicants, N.L., had been killed during the operation “Storm” or immediately afterwards, in August 1995, on the territory of “Krajina”. The police opened an inquiry into the circumstances of his death. 7. In January 2006 the police interviewed the first and second applicants, who had no direct knowledge about the circumstances in which N.L. had died. 8. M.L., also interviewed in January 2006, said that in August 1995 she had been in a convoy comprising people, tractors and “military armoured vehicles”. N.L. had also been in that convoy. He had been dressed in a Serbian army uniform and had been wearing an army mask. The convoy had been attacked but she had not seen how N.L. had died. R.T., interviewed at the same time, confirmed M.L.’s statement. 9. On 10 July 2006 the applicants lodged a criminal complaint with the State Attorney’s Office against unknown perpetrators in connection with the killing of N.L. 10. On 11 April 2008 the body of N.L. was exhumed. It was dressed in a military uniform with a military identity card. 11. On 21 May 2008 the Sisak County State Attorney’s Office dismissed the applicants’ criminal complaint on the grounds that N.L. had been killed in combat between a unit of the paramilitary Serbian forces and the Fifth Corpus of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This decision was served on the applicants’ representative on 28 May 2008.