Until 1991, Medari was part of the Municipality of Nova Gradiška, and today it belongs to one of the youngest municipalities in Croatia, the Municipality of Dragalić. According to the 1991 census, Medari had 452 inhabitants, of whom 367 were Serbs. According to the most recent census in 2011, the village has 211 residents. Detailed data on the ethnic composition of the population are not yet available.

Date: 1 May 1995

Description of the crime: On the first day of Operation Flash, 1 May 1995, at around 6 a.m., members of the Croatian Army entered the village of Medari and committed a war crime against civilians they found in their homes. Twenty-one people were brutally killed using both firearms and cold weapons. The scale of the crime is underscored by the fact that among the victims were three children and eleven women, and most of the men were elderly. The youngest victim was 7 years old, the oldest 88, and as many as seven members of a single family (the Vuković family) were killed. All the victims were of Serbian nationality. According to statements from the victims’ families, the residents of Medari believed that, in the event of the Croatian Army entering the village, they would be protected by UNPROFOR, whose base was located in the immediate vicinity of the village.

Victims:

  1. Burojević, Ljeposava, born 1 January 1912/1925
  2. Burojević, Milan (Đuro), born 1 January 1935
  3. Čanak, Rade (Mile), born 1 January 1907
  4. Čanak, Draginja (Mile), born 1 January 1919
  5. Dičko Grmuša, Ruža (Uroš), born 13 June 1943
  6. Dičko, Željko (Petar), born 10 June 1967
  7. Đumić Kvakić, Draga (Pavao), born 7 January 1919
  8. Grmuša, Jovan (Blagoje), born 1 January 193
  9. Mrkonja/Mrkonjić, Jelena (Jovo), born 1 January 1936
  10. Ninković, Anka (Milan), born 20 April 1915
  11. Popović, Nikola (Tomislav), born 17 November 1927 / 4 February 1927
  12. Popović, Nada (Rade), born 31 May 1933
  13. Tomić, Zorka (Stanko), born 16 November 1923
  14. Vlajsavljević, Katarina (Stevo), born 1 January 1930
  15. Vuković, Anđelija (Jovan), born 5 January 1959
  16. Vuković, Cvijeta (Dušan), born 8 April 1950 / 15 March 1950
  17. Vuković, Dragana (Milutin), born 13 February 1988
  18. Vuković, Goran (Ranko), born 18 December 1984
  19. Vuković, Gordana (Ranko), born 18 October 1987
  20. Vuković, Milutin (Stanoje), born 16 June 1945
  21. Vuković, Ranko (Stanoje), born 1 April 1955

Regarding Dragan Romanić (born 1 January 1935), subsequent verifications established that the person died a natural death in 1990.

Information on the exhumation and identification of the victims: On 3 July 2010, the exhumation of the remains of 28 persons was completed from a mass grave located within the local cemetery in the village of Trnava. At the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Zagreb, on 29 March 2011, the following victims were identified: Cvijeta Vuković, Anđelija Vuković, Ranko Vuković, Milutin Vuković, Gordana Vuković, Goran Vuković, Dragana Vuković, Ruža Dičko, Željko Dičko, and Jovan Grmuša; and in April 2012: Kata Vlajsavljević, Zorka Tomić, Draga Đumić, and Anka Ninković.

Judicial consequences: To date, no one has been criminally held accountable for the crime in Medari. The procedure is still in the pre-investigation phase and is conducted against unknown perpetrators. Until the exhumation of the victims’ remains in Medari in 2010, the case was in the hands of the County State Attorney’s Office in Slavonski Brod, but in 2010 the case was transferred, by decision of the State Attorney’s Office of the Republic of Croatia (DORH), to the County State Attorney’s Office in Osijek. However, no indictment has yet been filed for the crime in Medari. The Vuković sisters, whose parents and younger sister were killed in the crime, initiated a compensation lawsuit on 4 September 2006 before the Municipal Court in Nova Gradiška, based on the Act on the Responsibility of the Republic of Croatia for Damage Caused by Members of the Croatian Armed Forces and Police during the Homeland War. That same court dismissed the claim as unfounded on 4 November 2009. The Civil-Administrative Department of the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Zagreb rejected the request for an out-of-court settlement because, in their interpretation, this was not a war crime, but civilians who suffered war damage. Based on costs incurred from the civil procedure initiated in relation to the claim for compensation for non-material damage due to the killing of the parents and minor sister, the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Nova Gradiška initiated foreclosure proceedings on the Vuković sisters’ property.