(CN) - A private U.S. defense contractor "trained and equipped the Croatian military for Operation Storm and designed the Operation Storm battle plan," which killed or displaced more than 200,000 Serbs in 1995, in the largest European land offensive since World War II, the Genocide Victims of Krajina say in Chicago Federal Court. They demand billions of dollars in damages from MPRI, founded by U.S. military officers who were "downsized" at the end of the Cold War, and L-3 Communications, which bought MPRI for $40 million in 2000.
"This is a class action brought by ethnic Serbs who resided in the Krajina region of Croatia up to August 1995 and who then became victims of the Croatian military assault known as Operation Storm - an aggressive, systematic military attack and bombardment on a demilitarized civilian population that had been placed under the protection of the United Nations," the 40-page complaint begins.
"Operation Storm was designed to kill or forcibly expel the ethnic Serbian residents of the Krajina region from Croatian territory, just because they were a minority religio-ethnic group. Defendant MPRI, a private military contractor subsequently acquired by Defendant L-3 Communications Inc., trained and equipped the Croatian military for Operation Storm and designed the Operation Storm battle plan. Operation Storm became the largest land offensive in Europe since World War II and resulted in the murder and inhumane treatment of thousands of ethnic Serbs, the forced displacement of approximately 200,000 ethnic Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatian territory, and the pillaging and destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Serbian-owned property. The victims of Operation Storm and their heirs and next of kin herein claim that Defendants were complicit in genocide."
Two named plaintiffs, Milena Jovic and Zivka Mijic, describe what they suffered in the offensive.
Jovic says that as she and her husband and children fled the bombardment of Knin, on Aug. 4, 1995, "they saw dozens of bodies scattered throughout the streets and roads leading out of Knin and houses and buildings burning as a result of shelling with incendiary explosives. ... While driving through the Lika area in the Krajina region, the Jovic's refugee column was shelled by artillery, and bombed and strafed by Croatian military aircraft. People were wounded and dying all around them."
They escaped to Serbia, where they still live.
Mijic, who suffered the same attack, say she and her family was a neighbor "decapitated when struck by an artillery projectile ... and many other attacks by Croatian forces resulting in refugees being wounded and killed in their exodus from the Krajina."
They lived in a refugee camp in Kosovo, and were granted residency in the United States in July 2000.
They claim, for the class, the MPRI and L3 knew, or should have known, when they sought work as mercenaries in the former Yugoslavia, of the atrocities and war crimes that Croatians had committed against Serbs in World War II concentration camps, and in widely reported statements from Croatian officials, including its president, in the 1980s, as the violence in the former Yugoslavia intensified.