SPLIT, Feb 6 (Hina) - Lawyer Doris Kosta, who defends Ivica Rajic before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, said on Friday she was very optimistic about the case, but stressed it was too early to speak about it.
SPLIT, Feb 6 (Hina) - Lawyer Doris Kosta, who defends Ivica Rajic
before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, said on Friday she was
very optimistic about the case, but stressed it was too early to speak
about it.#L#
Speaking to Hina in Split after returning from The Hague, Kosta said
her optimism was based on the improved position of Croat suspects in
the tribunal's custody.
"Now the Croats are looked at a bit differently. I saw it for myself
during this visit to The Hague that the attitude towards the Croats
was also changing in the Netherlands itself," the lawyer said.
Kosta said that the problem was that the Croatian government did not
treat all the Croatian indictees equally.
"We lawyers also sent a request to the previous government to
determine criteria so that all indicted Croats would be equally
treated by the government, but nothing was done about it," Kosta said,
adding that the wives of Croatian indictees, Venera Kordic, Vesna
Ljubicic and Lence Rajic, covered their own travel expenses when
visiting their husbands.
Kosta said that her travel expenses were covered by the Hague
tribunal.
"One should not forget that more than 100 people from the tribunal's
Office of the Prosecutor work on each case, while Rajic is defended by
only Zeljko Olujic and me. For his defence, we must examine a million
documents, and it is not clear whether his defence will be financed by
the tribunal or by just the two of us," she said.
Rajic, former Croatian Defence Council (HVO) commander who also went
by the name of Viktor Andric, is charged with war crimes against
Muslim civilians in the Vares area of central Bosnia.
The indictment says that as the commander of the HVO Second Operations
Group, Rajic ordered an attack on the predominantly Muslim village of
Stupni Do near Vares on 23 October 1993, in which at least 37 people
were killed, women were sexually abused and the village was
destroyed.
Rajic, 46, is also charged with the arrest, maltreatment and inhumane
confinement of 250 Muslims in Vares in October 1993.
Rajic was arrested on 5 April 2003 in Split, and was handed over to
the tribunal on 24 June of the same year. He pleaded not guilty to all
counts of the indictment.
(Hina) vm