- Published: 30.11.2017.
PM Plenkovic says ICTY verdict unjust for accused, Bosnian Croats, Croatia's 1990s state leadership
The ICTY verdict against six former Bosnian Croat officials is unjust for them, for the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and for Croatia's state leadership in the 1990s, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the start of a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
He once again extended his condolences to the family of former HVO (Bosnian Croat Defence Council) commander Slobodan Praljak and regretted that he committed suicide during an appeals hearing at the ICTY yesterday. "Evidently shaken by the possibility that he might be convicted and for his own moral reasons, he took his own life."
"This is an unprecedented event for any international tribunal and, in a way, Praljak sent a message about what he thought and how he saw the verdict, which in our opinion too is unjust for the six, for the Croat people, and in the part alluding to certain elements linking (Croatia's) then state leadership to the war events in BiH," PM Plenkovic said.
He underlined that Croatia extended its condolences to all the victims of all the crimes committed in BiH, regardless of the perpetrators.
He said Croatia was a friend and a neighbour of BiH and that the Croat people, together with the Bosniaks, had been crucial for BiH's independence at a March 1992 referendum.
"The support which Croatia gave BiH during the war and the Milosevic regime's Great Serbia project was constant, humanitarian, political, military. (Croatia) provided for hundreds of thousands of BiH refugees, without looking at anyone's ethnicity. Not to mention the Washington Agreement, the Split Declaration, (Operation) Storm's watershed role in the total change of balance on the ground, which later made it possible for the (Bosniak) Army of BiH, the HVO, and the HV (Croatian Army) to liberate large parts of BiH," PM Plenkovic said.
He reiterated that Croatia would challenge certain parts of yesterday's verdict within existing legal mechanisms.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Appeals Chamber on Wednesday upheld the sentences against six wartime Bosnian Croat civilian and military leaders in the Prlic et al. case. Former Herceg-Bosnia PM Jadranko Prlic was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment, former defence minister Bruno Stojic and former HVO chiefs-of-staff Praljak and Milivoj Petkovic to 20 years each, former HVO military police commander Valentin Coric to 16 years, and the chief of the POW exchange office, Berislav Pusic to ten.
The Chamber also found that there existed a joint criminal enterprise, an international armed conflict in BiH in which Croatia was involved, and a state of occupation.
The ICTY tries individuals and not states or states' accountability, "and from that aspect there are no elements at all that would indicate any accountability" on Croatia's part, PM Plenkovic said.
Croatia tried to become an amicus curiae in the Prlic et al. case in 2006, 2016 and 2017, but was rejected every time.
"I think that in this trial, as a state, we tried to make the maximum effort to contribute information that would expand the views of the judges in this case. Unfortunately, that wasn't approved, but that response from 2016 indicates that one can't talk about any responsibility by Croatia's state leadership," PM Plenkovic said, adding that Croatia would continue to support BiH and BiH Croats.