The second retrial against this Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) general, who was tried and convicted of blowing up the Peruća dam in 1993 during the Homeland War, will again be held in the Split County Court.
The Supreme Court has sustained the defendant’s appeal, explaining that the first-instance ruling, delivered by the Split Court, contained contradictory and incomprehensible arguments.
Đukić was arrested in Montenegro in July 2015 and handed over to Croatia in March 2016.
In the first trial which ended in the late 2018, he was sentenced to nine years for war crimes, and in a retrial in 2020 he was sentenced to ten years.
During the 1991-1995 war, Đukic served as commander of a Yugoslav army motorised brigade and Croatian Serb paramilitary forces operating near the border with Bosnia. Evidence presented during the trial showed that in 1993 he had ordered 30 tonnes of explosives to destroy the Peruća dam, located about 50 kilometres inland from the southern coastal city of Split.
The explosion caused damage valued at a total of about 130 million kuna (17.5 million euros). The direct damage was 90 million kuna (120 million euros), while 10 million German marks was spent on repairing the dam.
Although the damage done was severe, workers managed to prevent a major flooding of the areas downstream, which would have endangered the lives of some 50,000 people.
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