ZAGREB, April 2 (Hina) - The Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal on Friday afternoon unsealed the indictment it issued against former Croat Defence Council (HVO) commanders Slobodan Praljak and Milivoj Petkovic, the former Prime
Minister of the so-called Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosna, Jadranko Prlic, and former Herzeg-Bosna Defence Minister Bruno Stojic, charging them with war crimes committed during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
ZAGREB, April 2 (Hina) - The Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal on
Friday afternoon unsealed the indictment it issued against former
Croat Defence Council (HVO) commanders Slobodan Praljak and Milivoj
Petkovic, the former Prime Minister of the so-called Croat Republic of
Herzeg-Bosna, Jadranko Prlic, and former Herzeg-Bosna Defence Minister
Bruno Stojic, charging them with war crimes committed during the war
in Bosnia-Herzegovina.#L#
The four men, who will on Monday turn themselves in to the Tribunal in
The Hague, are indicted, on the basis of their individual and command
responsibility, for crimes against humanity, serious breaches of the
Geneva conventions and violations of the laws and customs of war which
were committed through the persecution of thousands of Muslim
citizens, destruction, murder, rape and the deportation of Muslims
from the areas of Prozor, Gornji Vakuf, Jablanica, Mostar, Ljubuski,
Stolac, Capljina and Vares.
The ICTY prosecutors charge the indictees with crimes against
detainees held in several camps, including Heliodrom, Dretelj and
Gabela.
The introductory part of the indictment, issued on 4 March, alleges
that the crimes were perpetrated within a joint criminal enterprise
the aim of which was to politically and militarily subjugate and
permanently remove and ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslims and other
non-Croats who lived in the Bosnian areas annexed by the Croat
Republic of Herzeg-Bosna with the purpose to join a greater Croatia in
the period from November 1991 to April 1994.
The indictment reads that there was a territorial ambition to set up
Croatian territory which would cover the area of the 1939 Autonomous
Banovina of Croatia.
The prosecutors claim that this criminal enterprise also included late
Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and his close associates Gojko
Susak, Janko Bobetko and Mate Boban.
The four indictees incited crimes by spreading political, ethnic and
religious hatred as well as through terror which HVO military forces
carried out by confiscating or destroying Muslim-owned property,
through deportation and detention.
(Hina) ms sb