THE HAGUE, Nov 21 (Hina) - The ICTY Prosecution on Thursday stated a retrial in the Blaskic case was not justified, assessing that the Appeals Chamber would need three to four weeks to hear witnesses and consider new evidence upon
which it could rule on an appeal filed by the former commander of the Central Bosnia operative zone, Tihomir Blaskic.
THE HAGUE, Nov 21 (Hina) - The ICTY Prosecution on Thursday stated a
retrial in the Blaskic case was not justified, assessing that the
Appeals Chamber would need three to four weeks to hear witnesses and
consider new evidence upon which it could rule on an appeal filed by
the former commander of the Central Bosnia operative zone, Tihomir
Blaskic.#L#
It is too early at this stage to order a retrial, prosecutor Norman
Farrell said at a meeting of the Appeals Chamber where the defence
and prosecution state whether the new evidence submitted by
Blaskic's defence in an appeal process justified the request for a
retrial for some or all counts of the indictment.
The prosecution stated that the statute and rules of the ICTY
(International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) do not
currently give the Appeals Chamber the authority to call for a
retrial. The prosecution believes that the Appeals Chamber first
needs to decide on the relevance of 47 new pieces of evidence
presented by the defence and two testimonies by witnesses, while at
the same time giving the prosecution the opportunity to argue with
its own evidence.
According to Prosecutor Farrell, the new evidence does not change
the facts that were established in the first trial, and some
extenuating evidence presented by the defence in the appeal, in
effect, made matters worse for Blaskic.
Documents submitted in the appeal do not justify a retrial, Farrell
said.
The prosecution rejected as unsubstantiated the intelligence
reports by the head of the Croatian Intelligence Service, Miroslav
Tudjman, that point to others being guilty of the crimes committed
in the Lasva valley. The prosecution ascertained that documents
found by ICTY investigators in Croatian and Bosnian archives
corroborated the conclusions about Blaskic's guilt the trial
chamber reached in the first verdict.
The prosecutor also assessed that the new evidence presented by the
defence does not even bring into question the original ruling on
some counts of the indictment.
Before the meeting, Blaskic's defence said that if the Appeals
Chamber was not prepared to acquit Blaskic then the only other
option was a re-trial with a different trial chamber.
The ICTY on March 3, 2000 found Blaskic guilty of war crimes
committed in Bosnia's Lasva valley from mid-1992 to 1994 and
sentenced him to a 45-year imprisonment. The most serious of
charges relate to the murder of Muslim residents in Ahmici in April
1993.
(hina) sp/ha sb