The district prosecutor's office in Split said it had filed a war crimes indictment against 63-year-old Željko Badza for the 1991 killing of seven civilians in Serb rebel-occupied territory near the town of Zadar, Croatian media reported.
Among the victims was the grandfather of Croatian national football team captain and Real Madrid player Luka Modric.
Modric's grandfather, 61-year-old Luka Modric, after whom the footballer was named, was killed on 18 December 1991 near the village of Meki Doci, near the town of Zaton Obrovacki.
According to the indictment, Badza served as a special platoon commander and was a member of a Serbian paramilitary unit in the town of Obrovac.
Badza and unidentified members of the unit pounced on Modric, who was herding goats near his family house, and shot him for no apparent reason.
They subsequently headed towards the village of Meki Doci, opening fire on civilians they encountered on the way and causing the deaths of six people aged over 60.
Badza moved to Australia ten years ago.
Modric has not yet commented on the indictment. However, he has spoken in the past about how his grandfather's death affected him greatly when he was young.
"I was very emotionally connected to my grandfather. I was named after him. It's not easy when it happens to a young person and you can't understand it," Modric told the media.
The murders of Modric and the other victims took place after the Yugoslav People's Army, aided by local Serb fighters and the Slobodan Milosevic regime in Belgrade, which occupied a third of Croatian territory in 1991.
The key testimony in the case came from Grandfather Modric's nephew, who was hiding nearby at the time.
After Grandfather Modric brought his nephew food and returned to a location some 200 metres away, the nephew saw a police car coming from Obrovac, the indictment states.
He says he heard shouts, then gunshots, followed by silence. The vehicles then left.
That night, his mother says Luka Modric was found murdered with gunshot wounds to the head. / BGNES
