Croatian police on Friday arrested the former head of a notorious military jail, convicted of war crimes against ethnic Serbs, who had been on the run for 15 years.
Tomislav Duic, who was sentenced in absentia in 2006 to eight years in jail, was arrested in the central coastal city of Split, a court spokesman told local media.
The 47-year-old was one of eight former military policemen found guilty of killing two and torturing several other Serb civilians held at the Lora prison in Split in 1992, during Croatia's four-year independence war.
The prime suspect in the case, Duic had been on the run since a probe into the atrocities opened in 2001.
He is a suspect along with four other people in another ongoing trial for torturing Serb prisoners of war at the same prison, three of whom died as a result.
Croatia's proclamation of independence from the former Yugoslavia sparked the 1991-1995 conflict against Belgrade-backed rebel Serbs, who opposed the move.
More than 1,000 prisoners, mostly ethnic Serbs, passed through Lora jail during the war and some 70 went missing, according to a Split-based human rights group.
Croatia's capability to handle cases involving its own nationals accused of war crimes was a key condition for the country to join the European Union.
It became the bloc's 28th member in 2013.
