After finding that there was no reason for any of the orders and decisions to remain classified, Judge Fausto Pocar advised the ICTY Registry to withdraw the confidentiality status of those documents and treat them as public submissions.
The documents in question are decisions on defence motions for the extension of the time limit for response to the prosecution motion for the renewal of proceedings, which was filed in July this year, and orders for the appointment and replacement of judges.
However, the prosecution motion for the renewal of proceedings remained classified. The motion is based on new evidence that was not available to the prosecution at the time of the trial.
According to one of the supporting documents that was made public on Tuesday, the prosecution has called three new protected witnesses to testify on Blaskic's role in the crimes with which he was charged.
Blaskic, who commanded the Bosnian Croat forces in central Bosnia, was sentenced to 45 years in prison on 3 March 2000 after a two-year-long trial. The Trial Chamber found him guilty of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims in the Lasva river valley in 1993, including a massacre of more than 100 civilians in the village of Ahmici.
On 29 July 2004 the Appeals Chamber almost fully upheld the appeal and the new evidence presented by the defence and reduced the sentence to nine years. Blaskic was released on 2 August 2004 after spending eight years and four months in the ICTY detention unit in the Hague district of Scheveningen, where he was transferred on 1 April 1996 after his voluntary surrender.
The trial lasted 223 days. It started on 24 June 1997 and the prosecution and the defence made their closing arguments from 26 to 30 July 1999.