Croatia charges former Serb fighters with killing Russian war reporters
Pictures of Viktor Nogin and Gennady Kurena at the commemoration. Photo courtesy of Vladimir Mukusev.
Croatian police said on Tuesday that they had indicted two unnamed men, members of the special police unit of the Serb Autonomous Region of Krajina, a wartime Serb rebel state in Croatia, for the September 1991 murders of Russian journalists Viktor Nogin and Gennady Kurinnoy.
The two suspects were 26 and 33 years old when they killed two Russians on September 1, 1991, near the town of Hrvatska Kostajnica in Banija in central Croatia, a police investigation has established. None of the suspects is in Croatia and is not available to the authorities.
Nogin and Kurinnoy, experienced war reporters working for the Sverdlovsk State Television and Broadcasting Company, drove through the Banija region, which was at the epicenter of the war at the time, with various Croatian and Serbian units and paramilitary units. holding villages and controlling roads.
A group of members of the special police unit of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina, including two suspects, occupied the area around the town of Hrvatska Kostajnica.
“At the moment when the private vehicle with diplomatic license plates came from the direction of Hrvatska Kostajnica, the group opened fire on the vehicle with rifles,” the police said in a statement.
When the car stopped, special forces approached the wounded journalists.
The 26-year-old suspect “came among the first” and asked the Russians to show their personal documents, including passports and press cards. He then shot and killed both journalists.
The murder was witnessed by most members of the special forces group, including the then 33-year-old suspect, who was in command during the incident.
Although the then 33-year-old suspect, as the actual commander on the ground, was obliged to stop the then 26-year-old, he did nothing, but together with members of the group and the then 26-year-old suspect, took several actions to cover up the circumstances criminal offense, ”police said.
They said that members of the special police took away the victims’ journalistic equipment, set fire to their car, and then took the burnt wreck together with the remains of the killed journalists to a location along the Sunja riverbed in the village of Donji Kukuruzari.
“The wreckage of the car was found in 1992, while the remains of the murdered journalists have not been found to this day and are still listed as missing,” police said.
Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Russian authorities have co-operated in investigating the case, but the truth about the killings has been shrouded in mystery for three decades, with Croatian and Serbian authorities blaming each other for their deaths.
Russian journalist and university professor Vladimir Mukusev also tried to shed light on what happened with his own long-term investigation, and in 2011 he published a book on the case entitled ‘Black Map’.
In March 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Nogin and Kurinnoy the State Order of Courage.