"Our objections primarily concern ambiguities in the indictment and the undefined roles of the indictees in what is called 'a joint criminal enterprise'. We believe that the decision which the trial chamber has announced for mid-April will be similar to that in the case of Cermak and Markac," attorney Bozo Kovacic told Hina by telephone from The Hague.
The indictment against generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac was returned for amendment on March 8 due to the unclear role of the accused in the planning and implementation of the joint criminal enterprise and several other omissions.
Kovacic, who represents General Slobodan Praljak, said that the trial chamber in charge of the case of the six Bosnian Croats could not go below the decision in the Cermak-Markac case.
At today's status conference at the UN war crimes tribunal it was confirmed that the former prime minister of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna, Jadranko Prlic, and the other five indictees - Bruno Stojic, Valentin Coric, Berislav Pusic and generals Milivoj Petkovic and Slobodan Praljak - had requested that the tribunal finance their defence.
The indictment charges them with participating, from November 1991 to April 1994, in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at ethnically cleansing Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats from the territory of Herceg-Bosna to annex it to Croatia.
They are charged with 26 counts of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws and customs of war and crimes against humanity.
They surrendered to the tribunal on April 5, 2004, shortly after the indictment was issued, and on September 9 they were granted release pending trial.