Suspect in Zadar arson owned land used for the 'Crno Brdo' hazardous-waste dump

A man arrested on suspicion of deliberately starting a series of wildfires around Zadar is the registered owner of land in the village of Biljane Donje where the notorious Crno Brdo hazardous-waste site was located, prosecutors and police say.

Authorities identified one of four suspects as Vladimir Čupić, who until recently owned the parcel on which some 140,000 tonnes of carcinogenic industrial waste accumulated over years. Croatian investigators say Čupić is among four people detained in connection with ten fires in the Zadar area.

Arrests, charges and pre-trial custody

Croatian police arrested Čupić together with two Croatian citizens of Serbian nationality and a Polish national. All four are charged with a "serious criminal offence against public safety" that carries a prison term of one to ten years, and prosecutors have ordered pre-trial detention because of the risk of reoffending; for three of the suspects authorities also cited a risk of influencing witnesses, and for one the risk of flight.

Čupić has previously told reporters he leased part of the inherited land to Sadik Čolić, owner of MLM Group, believing the site would be used to store ordinary building materials such as cement and blocks. He maintained he did not know slag from the former Šibenik factory for electrodes and ferroalloys (TEF) would be tipped onto his parcel.

"The whole village hated me because of that. I waited for people to understand what had happened and that I had been deceived," Čupić told a weekly magazine in May of last year, according to published accounts. Investigators are also examining whether there is any link between the fires and terrorism-related offences.

The illegal Crno Brdo dump became a long-running environmental scandal: the state was later fined €1,000,000 by the Court of Justice of the European Union and ordered to pay €6,500 per day until the site was fully remediated. Final cleanup work, with total costs of €17.5 million including VAT, was completed at the end of July 2026, shortly before the recent fires and the arrests.

Photo: EPA/STRINGER