Croatia top court confirms war crimes verdicts

ZAGREB, March 5 (Reuters) Croatia's Supreme Court has confirmed war crimes sentences handed down to eight former military policemen for torturing and killing Serb prisoners of war in 1992, the state radio reported today.

The ruling is likely to put an end to a controversial retrial of Croatia's own troops, which indicated the former Yugoslav republic's new resolve to tackle all war crimes as it advances towards European Union membership.

It was not immediately clear if the defendants can still appeal to the Constitutional Court.

The eight had worked at the Lora military prison in the Adriatic city of Split during Croatia's 1991-95 war against Serbs opposing its independence.

They were accused of beating and torturing prisoners, both soldiers and civilians, at Lora, between June and September 1992.

They had pleaded not guilty and denied all charges.

The eight were first tried and acquitted by the Split county court in 2002, amid allegations by human rights groups of bias, mishandling of evidence and harassment of witnesses.

The Supreme Court overturned their acquittal and ordered a retrial before the same court.

In the retrial, the court sentenced in March 2005 the top two defendants, a former military prison commander and his deputy, to eight years in prison. One policeman received seven years and the remaining five got six-year sentences.

Only four defendants attended the end of the trial. The other four, including the prison commander, went into hiding after being acquitted in the first trial and remain at large.

Serbs were seen as villains of the war and wartime atrocities against them were rarely investigated or perpetrators punished until a pro-Western coalition ousted the nationalists from power in 2000.

REUTERS PDM PM1840