WAR VETERANS BLOCKADE ROADS IN 9 COUNTIES IN PROTEST AT VERDICT

ZAGREB, March 27 (Hina) - War veterans, gathered in their two associations -- the main committee of the Croatian Homeland Defence War veterans and the Croatian disabled war veterans (HVIDR) --, have asserted that they achieved their chief goal of protests and blockade of a score of roads on Thursday as they planned to "draw attention to political pressure to which the Croatian judiciary was exposed in the case of the so-called Gospic Group". The protest of the war veterans, on the other hand, was labelled by the incumbent authorities as an attack on Croatia as a democratic and law-based country. #L# Expressing their disagreement with Monday's verdict of the Rijeka County Court's panel of judges that sentenced Tihomir Oreskovic, retired general Mirko Norac, and Stjepan Grandic, to 15, 12 and 10 years in prison respectively, members of the above-mentioned two societies blockaded roads at 19 spots in nine out of 21 Croatian counties, for several hours on Thursday. According to a police report, there were neither injuries nor serious incidents during those protests. Police officers, however, had to intervene to a minor extent in Zagreb, Rijeka and Zadar. The police announced they were going to press criminal charges against the organisers and masterminds of the protest rallies. According to the police, the blockades and protests which began at noon drew some 1,500 demonstrators. Some of them used about 200 vehicles to blockade roads. The blockades were lifted from all roads by 14:30 hrs, except for a blockade in Sinj on Zagreb-Split highway where it lasted until 16:00 hrs when the protesters removed the obstacles on their own after police officers commenced with clearing the road. At the protest sites, the demonstrators reiterated their stand that the verdict in the Gospic Group case was actually the criminalisation of the Homeland Defence War and all Croatian soldiers and that the ruling was made under pressure of the international community. Most of the roads - ten of them - were blockaded in Split-Dalmatia County. Traffic was obstructed on two roads in Osijek-Baranja County, while Zagreb, Primorje-Gorski Kotar, Lika-Senj, Karlovac and Dubrovnik-Neretva counties had one road blockaded each. In the rest of the 11 counties there were no attempts to obstruct traffic, and representatives of local associations of war veterans said they supported the protests against the verdict in the Gospic Group case, but they opposed the blockade of roads. The public connected an incident which happened overnight in Bibinje (a larger Zadar area) with today's events. Two felled pine tree trunks were placed on the Adriatic highway passing through Bibinje, causing a traffic accident in which one person sustained injuries. Although the organisers of today's protests distanced themselves from that incident, the trunks on the road in Bibinje were the topic of an ongoing parliamentary discussion in Sabor. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Ivan Ninic, described it as the beginning of the so-called "log revolution", alluding to the start of the rebellion by ethnic Serbs in Croatia in 1990, and demanded a break of the sitting so that parliamentary parties could take a stand on that event. Labelling the blockades of roads as an attack against democracy and the rule of law in Croatia, Premier Ivica Racan at Thursday's session of his cabinet said that "political mentors" stood behind those events, and warned that Thursday's protests would affect Croatia's tourism. President Stjepan Mesic has said that every blockade of roads is levelled against the Republic of Croatia. (hina) ms sb