"We expect the tribunal to file a request using standard procedure. We hope Nova TV will grant it, because it is a request for evidence in a criminal proceeding," the Assistant Justice Minister in charge of cooperation with the tribunal, Jaksa Muljacic, told Hina in a telephone interview.
Under Article 3 of the Constitutional Law on Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the government shall send a request for cooperation filed by the ICTY to a competent government body or a court having territorial jurisdiction for the execution of such request.
Nova TV has received a request from the Zagreb office of the ICTY for the delivery of a recording of the network's prime-time news programme "24 Hours" broadcast on 30 August, in which lawyer Anto Nobilo said that ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had filed a motion for a retrial of General Tihomir Bleskic.
Nobilo cited the accused Miroslav Bralo Cicko, who had reached a plea agreement with the ICTY prosecutors, as a possible prosecution witness against Blaskic.
Muljacic said that a request for evidence which the ICTY had sent directly to Nova TV was in conformity with the agreement between Croatia and the United Nations of 2000. He dismissed media reports that the request was in violation of the procedure laid down in the Constitutional Law.
At a press conference in the Swiss capital Bern on 1 September, Del Ponte declined to answer a question about her motion for the review of the appeal judgement in the Blaskic case, saying that the motion was confidential and that its disclosure would be in violation of the tribunal's Rules of Procedure and Evidence.