Tomislav Mercep. Photo courtesy of N1.

Tomislav Mercep, a former police official and assistant at the Croatian interior ministry, has died “after a severe and long-lasting illness”, the Association of Volunteers of the Homeland War, which Mercep led for many years,announced on Tuesday.

In February 2017, the Croatian Supreme Court sentenced Mercep to seven years in prison for war crimes, although he was freed after serving two years because of ill-health.

He was convicted of not preventing a reservist police battalion nicknamed the ‘Mercepovci’ (‘Mercep’s Men’) from detaining, torturing and killing several dozen mainly Serb civilians at the Zagreb Trade Fair, Kutina in central Croatia and Pakracka Poljana in western Slavonia in late 1991.

A total of 46 civilians were killed by the Mercepovci, three went missing and have not been found, and six were tortured but survived.

The victims included a Serb family – 12-year-old Aleksandra Zec and her two parents – who were killed by the unit in Zagreb in December 1991.

Although members of Mercep’s unit were arrested soon after the killings, in 1992, they were later released due to procedural issues, although they admitted the crimes.

In March this year, the Supreme Courtreleased him on parole after serving three-quarters of his sentence.

The Supreme Court said in a statement that since August 2019, when a previous parole request was denied, the situation had changed because Mercep’s health had “significantly worsened”.

Mercep was the subject of controversy in 2018 when Croatian news site Index reported that he had spent several weeks at a spa instead of in jail.

As Mercep is a Croatian war veteran, War Veterans’ Minister Tomo Medved said hevouched for him as a worthy recipient of the spa treatment.