ICTY PUBLISHES CONSOLIDATED INDICTMENT AGAINST SIX BOSNIAN CROATS

THE HAGUE, April 6 (Hina) - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Monday afternoon issued a consolidated indictment against former Bosnian Croat military and political officials Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic following their voluntary surrender and transfer to the ICTY detention unit Scheveningen on Monday.#L# Last week the ICTY unsealed parts of the indictment referring to Prlic, Stojic, Praljak and Petkovic. After the authorised judge yesterday unsealed parts of the indictment referring to Coric and Pusic, the tribunal published the consolidated indictment. The accused are charged on the basis of individual and command responsibility with 26 counts of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws and customs of war committed through the expulsion of dozens of thousands of Muslims and other non-Croats, killings, rape, deportations, imprisonment of civilians, inhuman and cruel treatment, destruction of property and of religious and education facilities, plunder, and illegal attacks on and terrorising of civilians. The accused are charged with participating, from November 1991 to April 1994, in "a joint criminal enterprise to politically and militarily subjugate, permanently remove and ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats who lived in areas on the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were claimed to be part of the Croatian Community (and later Republic) of Herceg-Bosna, and to join these areas as part of a 'Greater Croatia'" or in close association with it, reads the indictment. "The territorial ambition of the joint criminal enterprise was to establish a Croatian territory with the borders of the Croatian Banovina, a territorial entity that existed from 1939 to 1941. It was part of the joint criminal enterprise to engineer the political and ethnic map of these areas so that they would be Croat-dominated, both politically and demographically," reads the indictment. Among numerous persons who participated in the enterprise, there were also the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, the late Defence Minister Gojko Susak, the late General Janko Bobetko, and the late president of Herceg-Bosna, Mate Boban. The indictment states that the former prime minister of the Croatian Republic of Herceg Bosna (HR HB), Jadranko Prilic, 45, was along with Mate Boban the most powerful official in the political structure and bodies of HR HB/Croatian Defence Council (HVO) in 1992/93 and had de jure and/or de facto power, effective control and/or substantial influence over the Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and military. The former defence minister of HR HB, Bruno Stojic, 49, is alleged to have exercised de jure and/or de facto power, effective control and substantial influence over all parts and branches of HR HB/HVO operations. From March 1992 to July 1993, General Slobodan Praljak, 59, a senior Croatian Army officer, Assistant Minister of Defence and senior representative of the Croatian Ministry of Defence to the Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and armed forces, served as a conduit for orders, communications and instructions from President Franjo Tudjman, Gojko Susak and other senior officials of the Republic of Croatia to the Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and armed forces, and from July to November 1993 he was the top overall military commander of the Herceg-Bosna/HVO armed forces. General Milivoj Petkovic, 55, as chief of the HVO Main Staff from April 1992 to 24 July 1993, and from April to August 1994, exercised de jure and/or de facto command and control over the Herceg-Bosna/HVO armed forces. From April 1992 to the end of 1993, Valentin Coric, 48, was the commander of the HVO Military Police which regularly played important roles in administering Herceg-Bosna/HVO prisons and detention facilities and in combat and ethnic cleansing operations. Berislav Pusic, 52, an officer of the HVO Military Police, was in 1993 appointed head of the Service for the Exchange of Prisoners and Other Persons and in August 1993 president of the commission to take charge of all Herceg-Bosna/HVO prisons and detention facilities holding prisoners of war and detainees. The indictment outlines the course of events from the proclamation of the Croatian Community (HZ) Herceg Bosna on 18 November 1991 on the territory of some 20 municipalities to the establishment of the HVO in April 1992 and the HVO's ultimatum to the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina to withdraw by 15 April 1993 from the three provinces which under the Vance-Owen peace plan were to be Croat-dominated, and the open conflict after the passage of the deadline. When the 15 April deadline passed without the BiH Government acceding to their position, Herceg-Bosna/HVO forces set about a broad campaign of persecutions, military actions, arrests and expulsions to enforce their demands, with more than thirty attacks on Muslim towns and villages on 16-18 April 1993, including the attacks and atrocities in Ahmici on 16 April and in Sovici and Doljani on 17 April and other places, reads the indictment. The HB/HVO forces, with the support and participation of the bodies and authorities of the Croatian Armed Forces, started a massive campaign to attack and cleanse Bosnian Muslims from areas which were claimed to be part of Herceg Bosna. The six accused are charged with instigating and fomenting political, ethnic or religious strife, division and hatred. By speeches, propaganda and false information, the Herceg-Bosna/HVO authorities created, instigated and supported a charged anti-Muslim atmosphere, promoted ethnic division and fostered religious mistrust, reads the indictment. The accused are also charged with use of force, intimidation and terror, appropriation and destruction of property, detention and imprisonment, forcible transfer and deportation, forced labour and using prisoners as human shields. As a result of the Herceg-Bosna/HVO campaign of persecution and ethnic cleansing, the Bosnian Muslim population in many parts of Herceg-Bosna was substantially reduced, and those who remained were plainly dominated by the Herceg-Bosna/HVO authorities and forces, as planned and intended by the joint criminal enterprise, including the accused. On about 1 March 1994, Franjo Tudjman and the Herceg-Bosna/HVO leadership entered into the Washington Agreement, which established the Croat-Muslim federation and ended the large-scale open fighting between the two sides, reads the document. The indictment also specifies areas from where the Muslim population was expelled, as well as detention camps. It describes individual crimes and the circumstances in which they occurred and states the number of people who were killed, wounded or went missing. Reference is made to a list of victims which is enclosed with the indictment and which the ICTY did not make public. The document speaks about several hundreds of people who were killed or went missing during the attacks, persecutions and imprisonment, especially about the hundreds of civilians who were killed or wounded in the shelling of eastern Mostar and at least 135 civilians who were killed or wounded by HVO firearms during the siege of eastern Mostar from June 1993 to April 1994. Each of the accused is criminally responsible for the crimes charged in the indictment which he planned, instigated, ordered or committed, or in the planning, preparation or execution of which he aided and abetted. In addition or in the alternative, each accused is criminally responsible for the crimes which were intended and committed as part of the joint criminal enterprise, in the sense that each of the accused committed these crimes as a member of or participant in such enterprise, reads the indictment. (Hina) rml sb