Dalj massacre

Dalj killings and Dalj massacre refer to the events beginning on 1 August 1991 which resulted in the murder of 34 Croatian civilians and 28 Croatian policemen in the village of Dalj, eastern Slavonia at the hand of Serbian paramilitaries, during the Croatian War of Independence.

August killings
At the early stage of fighting thousands of Croat and other non-Serb civilians fled from villages of Erdut, Dalj and Aljmaš.

In August 1991, Serb forces led by paramilitary leader Željko Ražnatović arrested Croat civilians who stayed in their homes and kept them in a detention facility in the police building in Dalj. Eleven of them were shot immediately and their bodies were buried in a mass grave in the village of Ćelija (near Trpinja). Another 23 victims were buried in Daljski Atar.

On 1 August 1991, Serb paramilitaries with some Serb officials entered the detention facility in the police building in Dalj and shot 28 regional Croat police officers. The bodies of the police officers were then taken from the building and dumped into the nearby Danube River.

Aftermath
Following the end of the Battle of Vukovar in November 1991, Dalj was also used as one of the detention facilities for prisoners from Vukovar, where some of them were abused and at least 35 of them were executed.

At least 135 other Croat and non-Serb civilians were killed in this region up until May 1992. In May 2013, Croatian authorities in Osijek started a trial of two Croatian Serbs charged with war crimes against Croatian civilians, including war rape of a 20-year woman, and forcing her family to watch on, committed in August 1991 in Dalj.

War crimes charges by the ICTY

 * Slobodan Milošević – President of Serbia, charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for ordering murder, deportations and torture of non-Serbs in Dalj through paramilitary soldiers. He died before a verdict was reached.
 * Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović - Stanišić, Head or Chief of the State Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, and Simatović, commander of the Special Operations Unit of the same agency, were both charged for persecutions, deportations and murder of at least 62 people as a crime against humanity in Dalj. According to the prosecution, the Red Berets were commanded by Simatović, while ‘Arkan’s men’ and Scorpions were units also responsible for various crimes. The evidence called by the prosecution alleges that the Serbian State Security Service controlled those units and organized their training. Both men were acquited on all charges in May 2013.
 * Goran Hadžić – president of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia, charged with unlawful confinement, deportations murder of at least 89 people in Dalj. His trial is pending.