Marijacic and Rebic were indicted on 10 February 2005 for publishing a protected testimony in the case against former Bosnian Croat commander Tihomir Blaskic. At the time relevant to the indictment, Marijacic was a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Hrvatski List weekly and Rebic was the former head of Croatia's Security Information Service (SIS). On 18 November 2004 , Marijacic disclosed in an article the name of the protected witness, Johannes van Kuijk, a Dutch officer who served with the Dutch contingent within the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The article contained information which Marijacic obtained from Rebic. The witness spoke about a failed attempt by Miroslav Bralo a.k.a Cicko to surrender voluntarily to a UN base in central Bosnia after he had heard that he had been indicted by the ICTY for war crimes.
In the continuation of the main hearing on Wednesday morning, Judge Ian Bonomy, one of the three members of the ICTY trial chamber, established that at the time when the controversial article was published by Hrvatski List in November 2004, there were no more reasons for applying protective measures to the witness in question, as Dutch soldiers were no longer deployed in Bosnia Herzegovina and Bralo already turned himself in.
The judge's statement was corroborated by the first witness of the prosecution, Terence Cameron, an investigator who had led an inquiry against Marijacic and Rebic. Cameron said that there had been no real reasons for enforcing the protective measures and that the witness Johannes van Kuijk had also confirmed it during his conversation with the investigator.
Asked by Rebic's lawyer Kresimir Krsnik, Cameron also confirmed that the document published by Hrvatski List was not marked as classified.
Cameron said that during his testimony in the Blaskic trial in December 1997, Van Kuijk was willing to testify in open session, but the session was closed at the insistence of the Dutch government.
Following a prosecution motion, the trial chamber today admitted as evidence a report released by Hina on 27 April 2005.
The report quoted Rebic as saying that at the time of publication of the article in Hrvatski List he wrote that he was aware of what he was doing but that he "is convinced that both Croatia and he will benefit from it as this proves that it is not true that either he or the state of Croatia were involved in harbouring Bralo".
Lawyer Krsnik said that the author of Hina's article had told him that this was "a free journalistic interpretation of Rebic's words".
The trial chamber left it to the defence team to decide whether they would call the news item's author to take the witness stand in this case.
The other prosecution witness who testified today was William Tomljanovich, an expert who analysed Croatian documents and archives.
Tomljanovic testified about a transcript of talks which the then Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, Defence Minister Gojko Susak, his aide Marko Rebic, and chief editors of dailies Vjesnik and Vecernji List held on 7 May 1997 to discuss models for the publication of a statement of another protected witness in the Blaskic case.
Lawyer Krsnik and his colleague Marin Ivanovic, who represents Marijacic, challenged the relevancy of the evidence and the authenticity of the transcript from the Office of the President.
The trial was due to resume in the afternoon.