"I welcome that decision and we hope that we shall have a fair trial before a Croatian court and that we shall prove that Norac is not guilty of crimes he is charged with," the Zagreb-based lawyer told Hina on Wednesday evening.
General Ademi's lawyer, Cedo Prodanovic, has said that much of credit for the referral of the case should go to amica curiae, i.e. friends of court, Mirjan Damaska, Davor Krapac and Zeljko Horvatic.
Lawyer Prodanovic explained that these three law professors proposed to the ICTY "creative application of the Croatian legislation" regarding command responsibility which was not incriminated by Croatian laws at the time when the alleged acts of crime were committed. Prodanovic told Hina on the phone on Wednesday evening that he did not expect the start of the the trial before next spring.
The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Wednesday stated that it had decided to refer the case against the two Croatian generals, accused of war crimes in the 1993 Medak Pocket operation, to the Croatian judiciary.
A joint indictment issued on May 27, 2004 charges Ademi and Norac in line with command and individual responsibility with five counts of crime against humanity and breaches of the law and customs of war committed against Serb civilians and soldiers captured in the September 1993 Croatian army operation "Medak Pocket".
They are charged with persecution based on political, religious or racial grounds, killings, wanton destruction of villages and plunder of public and private property.
At the time of the operation, from 9 to 17 September 1993, Ademi was commander of the Gospic Military District, while Norac commanded the Croatian Army 9th Motorised Brigade, which was the main force in the operation, one of the first Croatian Army liberation operations during the war.
After he voluntary surrendered to the ICTY, Ademi was in February 2002 released pending trial, while Norac has been serving his 12-year prison sentence for 1991 war crimes against Serb civilians from Gospic in the jail in the Croatian town of Glina.