On 7 July 1995, Hrastov was awarded the Order of Nikola Šubić Zrinski by Croatian president Franjo Tuđman, and in April 1996, was named an honorary citizen of Karlovac.

During the 2000s and early 2010s, Hrastov was retried multiple times by the Croatian judiciary before finally being sentenced to four years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court in 2012.

Also criticized was the Supreme Court's decision not to explicitly describe the killings as a war crime in its ruling or take into account witness testimony which suggested Hrastov was not the sole perpetrator.

Events commemorating the victims have caused substantial controversy within Karlovac and have been disrupted multiple times by Croatian war veterans.

At a war veterans' event in 2021, Croatian president Zoran Milanović made comments that were widely perceived as being supportive of Hrastov.

Later that year, on the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre, the Karlovac town council voted to name the bridge where the killings took place after Hrastov's special police unit.

[1] On 8 July 1989, a large Serb nationalist rally was held in Knin, during which banners threatening a Yugoslav People's Army (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslovenska narodna armija; JNA) intervention in Croatia, as well as Chetnik iconography, were displayed.

This, in turn, fed a rise in Serbian nationalism in many Croatian Serb communities, which was encouraged by the government of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, led by Milošević.

As part of the Brioni Agreement of 18 July, representatives of Slovenia and Croatia agreed to delay their countries' formal independence by three months.

[11] It figured prominently in the ideology of Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj, who envisaged creating a Greater Serbia along the Virovitica–Karlovac–Karlobag line.

[15] By the time of the killings at the Korana bridge, heavy JNA shelling had resulted in extensive damage to Karlovac's historic town centre.

He served as a member of an elite anti-terrorist unit of the Bjelovar Police Department until 5 March 1992, when he was arrested amidst increasing media scrutiny of his actions.

The Supreme Court of Croatia subsequently annulled the verdict and ordered a retrial, but no further legal action was taken against Hrastov for the duration of the war.

[20] On 7 July 1995, Hrastov was awarded the Order of Nikola Šubić Zrinski by Croatian president Franjo Tuđman for "heroic deeds in wartime".

[21] During Operation Storm, Hrastov allegedly served as the commander of a detention camp in the town of Ozalj, where ethnic Serb prisoners were subjected to torture.

[9] Widely regarded as a war hero in Karlovac,[22] Hrastov enjoyed extensive support from local veterans' organizations during the proceedings against him.

[24] The Association of Police Special Forces in Karlovac County expressed "bitterness" at the decision and made an appeal to veterans' organizations to refrain from "emotional reactions".

The Croatian Cultural Council called the verdict "shameful and unsustainable", describing Hrastov as "a symbol of Karlovac's defence and a hero of the Homeland War".

Judge Žarko Dundović justified the relatively short sentence on the grounds that Hrastov did not otherwise have a criminal history, that he was 70 percent disabled and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that his wife was also ill.[22] Zoran Pušić, president of the Citizens' Committee for Human Rights (GOLJP), remarked at a subsequent press conference that "it is difficult to see how four years in prison could be an adequate sentence for killing 13 people."

Veselinka Kastratović, a representative of the non-governmental organization Center for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights, noted that the Supreme Court had failed to properly examine testimonies which indicate that there were other perpetrators in addition to Hrastov who were involved in the massacre.

On this occasion, the ruling failed to explicitly refer to the massacre as a war crime, describing it instead as "the unlawful killing and wounding of enemies.

Alojzije Čerkez, the president of the Karlovac branch of the Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans' Association (HVIDR-a), described it as "a provocation which must be cut off at the roots.