ZAGREB, May 17 (Hina) - The Office of the Croatian State Prosecutor has asked the Interior Ministry to inspect whether a special police team, established and led by former police chief Ranko Ostojic, carried out any unlawful
activities, as claimed by a Croatian weekly.
ZAGREB, May 17 (Hina) - The Office of the Croatian State Prosecutor has
asked the Interior Ministry to inspect whether a special police team,
established and led by former police chief Ranko Ostojic, carried out
any unlawful activities, as claimed by a Croatian weekly.#L#
The Interior Ministry has confirmed that its Criminal Police
Department last Thursday received a request from the State
Prosecutor's Office to check whether the so-called Ostojic team had
carried out any illegal activities.
"The Criminal Police Department will take all necessary measures and
actions in line with the law in order to check all allegations cited
in the request, and will inform the Office of the State Prosecutor of
the results," the ministry said in a press release on Monday.
Both the ministry and the Office of the State Prosecutor declined to
confirm whether the investigation was launched after an article was
published by the Croatian weekly on illegal operations of Ostojic's
special police team in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but the weekly believes
that it was its article that prompted the competent bodies to launch a
probe.
Some ten days ago, the weekly wrote that former Croatian Prime
Minister Ivica Racan, who also leads the Social Democratic Party
(SDP), together with the then police chief Ostojic had set up an
organised crime ring in Bosnia-Herzegovina which was involved in drug
smuggling and trafficking in human beings, the proceeds of which went
to SDP accounts.
Ostojic alone has confirmed that he established a special police team
to tackle serious crimes, explaining that he had been forced to do
this as other Croatian secret services were "inefficient".
(Hina) ms