We are not the only country in which a prisoner went on a hunger strike, Mesic told reporters after visiting the Plitvice Lakes National Park.
Mesic said that history recorded even more drastic measures, stating an example of IRA members in English prisons who one after another went on a hunger strike in 1981, asking to be treated as political prisoners. The strike was started by Bobby Sands who died after 66 days of refusing food. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating and dying successively over several months. The then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher denied their requests and all ten hunger striking prisoners died.
Asked if the Croatian judiciary had the right position on the hunger strike issue, Mesic said the Glavas case was an ongoing case, declining to comment on it.
One of the seven suspects in the Sellotape Case, Mirko Sivicic, has been on a huger strike for eight days in the Osijek prison, while the main witness against Branimir Glavas, Gordana Getos Magdic, started a hunger strike in Zagreb's Remetinec detention unit on Thursday.
A vice president of the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS), Damir Kajin, said today that Branimir Glavas was released from custody because the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had exerted political pressure.
Kajin believes that Parliament should once again discuss the Glavas case, namely the degrading and shameful behaviour of the judicial bodies.
Calling on Getos Magdic and Sivic to end their hunger strike, Kajin said that bishops and academicians, who asked that Glavas be released from custody, would not intercede on their behalf, nor would the parliament or war veterans associations.