The Justice Ministry and Zagreb's County Court said yesterday the order had been sent to Hrvatsko Slovo, its publisher Stjepan Seselj, and to Margetic, as requested by the tribunal.
Margetic, former editor-in-chief of Hrvatsko Slovo and incumbent editor-in-chief of Novo Hrvatsko Slovo, said yesterday he had not received any order and that the order referred to articles published after he left Hrvatsko Slovo.
In today's letter to Judge Alphonse Orie and chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, Margetic said the tone and content of the order reflected the "political insolence" of a judge who threatened that noncompliance with the order would be punished with up to seven years' imprisonment or a 100,000 euro fine.
Margetic said he would publish a special Novo Hrvatsko Slovo edition with President Stjepan Mesic's complete testimony before the Hague tribunal. He added he was bound to tell the truth by the human right to information and journalistic ethics.
In the letter, which was also delivered to the media, he labelled the tribunal "a Greater Serbia instrument for the equation of guilt and the creation of new myths that Croats are a criminal people".