ZAGREB, June 20 (Hina) - The "Feral Tribune" weekly reports in its latest issue that one of the documents which the office of Croatian President Stjepan Mesic believes will help prove the innocence of General Ante Gotovina is a
forgery.
ZAGREB, June 20 (Hina) - The "Feral Tribune" weekly reports in its
latest issue that one of the documents which the office of Croatian
President Stjepan Mesic believes will help prove the innocence of
General Ante Gotovina is a forgery. #L#
The said document is part of a set Mesic made available to the
government after "Nacional" weekly ran an interview with Gotovina,
the first after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him in 2001, since when he has been at
large.
Officials at the President's office would not comment on Feral's
claims, while Ivo Pukanic, Nacional owner and journalist, said the
authenticity of the documents should be determined by experts.
Feral Tribune claims that "Nacional, the President's Office and the
Counter-Intelligence Agency have set about defending General Ante
Gotovina with the help of intelligence forgeries and ploys".
The weekly supports its claim with the facsimile of a leaflet in
which the defence ministry of the "Republic of Srpska Krajina"
(RSK) calls on the local population to withdraw before "the Ustasha
army". The controversial leaflet was published in this week's issue
of Nacional. It is signed by Mile Mrksic, a commander of the
Croatian Serb rebel army, today in custody at the U.N. war crimes
tribunal in The Hague. The leaflet was distributed in formerly
Serb-held areas before the 1995 Croatian army and police operation
"Storm".
The weekly says the main argument which arouses suspicion about the
authenticity of the documents is the fact that the leaflet was
authenticated with a Cyrillic-script stamp of the RSK defence
ministry on which some letters in the name of the institution are in
Latin script.
The paper claims that this is "a ploy of Croatian intelligence
agents" who, it claims, released an almost identical document in
2001, the only difference being the changed direction in which
Croatian Serb civilians were to withdraw before the Croatian army.
Feral Tribune says another piece of evidence about the document
being a forgery is an article in "Hrvatski vojnik" (Croatian
soldier) magazine from 1997. In the article, says the weekly, Davor
Domazet described the leaflet as "a clever trick".
Officials at the President's Office would not comment on the
claims.
Ivo Pukanic, the author of the Nacional article which also featured
the controversial document, allows for the possibility that the
documents proving Gotovina's innocence include some of
questionable authenticity, but adds that this will have to be
established by experts.
(hina) rml