Skabrnja is on Friday marking the 31st anniversary of the massacre committed in that village by the former Yugoslav People's Army, Serb paramilitary forces and volunteers from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina under the command of the then Yugoslav National Army (JNA) officer Ratko Mladic.

The massacre in Skabrnja, a village near the coastal Croatian town of Zadar, was committed on the same when the heroic defence of the town of Vukovar collapsed.

Forty-three civilians and 15 Croatian defenders were massacred. Skabrnja had 56 civilian victims and 25 fallen defenders during the 1991-95 war. After the war, another six locals were killed by leftover mines and explosives.

Until the liberation during the police and military operation Storm in 1995, the war took the lives of a total 86 victims in that area in the Zadar hinterland.

The attack on Skabrnja started on 18 November 1991 early in the morning from two directions. Civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, who had hidden in basements and other shelters, were forcibly dragged out and massacred. About a hundred civilians, mostly women and children, were taken captive and transported to the occupied town of Benkovac.

Only former nurse Zorana Banic has been convicted of the crimes in Škabrnja. She was charged with and then sentenced for violating international law, that is, participating in the attack on and killing of the citizens of Skabrnja on 18 November 1991.

First, she was sentenced in absentia to 20 years of prison, and after her arrest in Switzerland in 2001 and extradition to Croatia, she was sentenced in a retrial to 13 years of prison.

After the decision was overruled, she was sentenced in a new retrial to 10 years of prison, and the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to six years. She was released from prison in October 2007.

On the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the massacre, the State Attorney’s Office (DORH) last week released new data on the prosecution of war crimes in the areas of Skabrnja and Nadin in November 1991.

On 15 July, the County Court in Split confirmed the indictment against Zoran Tadic, a 63-year-old national of Serbia and Australia, who is considered responsible for the death of 30 civilians and 13 defenders in Ambar.

Tadic was at the helm of local Serb paramilitaries in the area of Benkovac and one of the commanders of the attacks on Skabrnja.

The trial is scheduled to start on 4 July 2023 at the County Court in Split, where he will most likely be tried in absentia.

At the same court, a hearing is scheduled for 3 July 2023 for six citizens of Serbia and one citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a charge of their units killing 44 civilians in Skabrnja on 18 November 1991 and another 21 civilians by 12 March 1992, during the temporary occupation of Skabrnja, all mostly elderly persons.

18 November is a public holiday in Croatia, observed as Remembrance Day for the Victims of the War and the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja.