Association of Croatian Volunteer Veterans of the Patriotic War
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Tomislav Merčep (born 28 September 1952) is a former Croatian
politician and paramilitary during the Croatian War of Independence.
A native of Vukovar, Merčep worked as an engineer before joining
the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in
1990. He then entered the local city government as the Secretary of
People's Defense (Croatian: Sekretar
narodne obrane), where he exerted considerable power in the
local police and business, esp. in preparation for the impending war.
During the war, he engaged in paramilitary activities which were
subsequently investigated by the Hague tribunal[1]
and covered by the (now defunct) Croatian newspaper Feral
Tribune.[2]
At the turn of 1991, several properties owned by ethnic Serbs were
blown up in Vukovar, and it was widely speculated that Merčep was behind
this. In 1997 Feral Tribune released a document which
confirmed exchanges of large quantities of explosive materials in
September 1990 between Merčep and Branimir Glavaš. In August 1991, Merčep was briefly
arrested by Croatian authorities and detained on undisclosed charges,
but was soon released and moved to Zagreb
together with his family, a week before the Battle of Vukovar started.[citation needed]
Merčep later became an officer in the Croatian Ministry of Internal
Affairs and he participated in the other fronts of the Croatian War of Independence,
being in command of thousands of paramilitaries which were responsible
for killing and expelling thousands of ethnic Serbs from areas in and
around Gospić,
among other places. A decade later, Merčep and five members of his
unit, Munib Suljić, Igor Mikola, Siniša Rimac, Miro Bajramović and
Branko Šarić, were indicted on several criminal charges related to the
so-called "Pakračka poljana" case, involving the killing of prisoners,
mostly ethnic Serbs, in a field near Pakrac,
and later convicted.[3][4]
Merčep became a HDZ member of the Chamber of Counties of Croatian Parliament in 1993.
In 1995, he became the leader of the "Association of Croatian
Volunteer Veterans of the Patriotic War" (Croatian: Udruga
hrvatskih dragovoljaca Domovinskog rata, UHDDR). As of 2010[update] he remains at
the head of that association.
In late 1990s he quit the HDZ and instead founded his own party, the Croatian Popular
Party (Hrvatska pučka stranka, HPS). In 2000 he ran as a HPS
candidate on 2000 presidential
elections, where he received 0.85% of the vote and was eliminated in
the first round.
In 2003, the Croatian weekly Nacional reported that the ICTY was
"completing an indictment against Tomislav Merčep", after having talked
to Franjo Gregurić, Mladen Markač, Hrvoje Šarinić and others.[5]
There were media reports in 2006 that an indictment against Merčep
himself, based on ICTY investigations, was forthcoming in the Croatian
legal system[6]
but as of 2010[update] this has not
yet materialized.
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