Branimir Glavaš
Croatian politician / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Branimir Glavaš (born 23 September 1956 in Osijek)[1] is a Croatian convicted war criminal, retired major general and politician. He was one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party which was in power in the 1990s and one of its key figures until a split in 2006.
In 2009, Glavaš was found guilty of war crimes, including torture and murder of civilians, during his tenure as major general in the Croatian War of Independence.[2]
Glavaš came to prominence in his home city of Osijek in eastern Croatia during the war when he led its defense and attained the rank of major general in the Croatian Army. After the war he continued to exercise much influence as one of the leading members of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).[3]
In 2005, Glavaš was charged with war crimes at a Croatian court; he left HDZ and founded a new party – the Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja (HDSSB). After a lengthy and controversial trial, during which he was re-elected to parliament and had to be stripped of immunity twice, in 2009 he was found guilty of torture and murder of Serb civilians in Osijek during the war, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Zagreb County Court.[4] He then fled to neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina where he was arrested. In September 2010, his conviction was upheld by a Bosnian court, though the sentence had been reduced to 8 years in prison.[5][6] On 20 January 2015, after serving five years in prison, he was released from prison, after Croatia's Constitutional Court rescinded his war crimes conviction on procedural grounds. His case was sent back to the Supreme Court for retrial.[7] In July 2016, the Supreme Court quashed his verdict and ordered a retrial.[8]
In 2021 a new retrial began, with Glavaš being retried along with three of his subordinates. In October 2023, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in a first instance verdict.[9]