ZAGREB, March 24 (Hina) - Members of the Croatian Association of Homeland War Military Invalids (HVIDRA) are shocked by the verdicts to the so-called Gospic Group and ask "is it possible that Homeland War heroes are being convicted of
acts which were not proved in the trial," the association said in a press release Monday.
ZAGREB, March 24 (Hina) - Members of the Croatian Association of
Homeland War Military Invalids (HVIDRA) are shocked by the verdicts
to the so-called Gospic Group and ask "is it possible that Homeland
War heroes are being convicted of acts which were not proved in the
trial," the association said in a press release Monday. #L#
"The heroes of the Homeland War were convicted on the basis of
instumentalised, enemy witnesses and rigged proceedings in the
interest and under the pressure of Europe and the world to prove
that a law-based state is functioning and being subservient," says
HVIDRA.
The association called on its members to join in protests of support
to General Norac and all the other unfairly convicted heroes of the
Homeland War because, says the statement, accusations and
criminalising against everybody and everything in the Homeland War
must finally stop.
The Independent Croatian Volunteers association are also
protesting against the verdicts and say in a press release that the
sentence to General Norac is a sentence to the Homeland War and
everybody who took part in liberating the homeland.
The Federation of Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) believes that
today's verdict to Norac, Oreskovic and Grandic is a verdict to the
Homeland War.
The president and vice-president of the Croatian True Revival Party
(HIP), Miroslav Tudjman and Admiral Davor Domazet Loso, said the
verdict was a political one.
"I would not like to comment on the legality of the verdict, but on
the political context and its political consequences," said
Tudjman.
He stressed "we live in a time in which the current politics is not
only carrying out a policy of equalising the guilt of the aggressor
and the victim, but is also transferring the guilt onto the creators
of the Croatian state".
Tudjman said that after Vukovar, Gospic was the second city in
Croatia to have suffered the most in the Serb aggression, and nobody
had been convicted of those crimes.
Domazet said that "the verdict was a consequence of the main
assumption of the incumbent authorities that any Croatian state-
building idea is a part of a criminal ideology".
He added that nobody from the Serb side had answered for the
aggression and crimes in the Gospic area, at any level. On the other
hand, he said, indictments were being announced against Croatian
veterans who had defended the regions of western and eastern
Slavonia in 1991, and their goal would be to say that the Croatian
state had been created on crime. This is an example of guilt
transferral and unfounded theses that Croats had in fact irritated
Serbs, said Domazet.
The Croatian Pure Party of Rights (HCSP) also said it was shocked by
the verdicts.
"After following the process in the newspapers and contradictions
in the testimonies of the key witnesses, we are convinced that there
is no evidence that the defendants had committed the crimes with
which they had been indicted, and it is obvious that the court was
not independent," says the HCSP.
The prosecution of the U.N. war crimes tribunal could not comment on
the verdict on Monday, since it did not have documents on the
verdicts available.
(hina) lml sb