ZAGREB, Jan 5 (Hina) - According to one of the potential victims, the police are tightening the grip around the person who, under the pseudonym "General Hopp", has been making threats with terrorist actions and assassinations of
senior state officials for the past three months. "We hope the investigation is nearing completion because the number of suspects has narrowed," the chairwoman of parliament's Committee on Internal Affairs and National Security, Djurdja Adlesic, told Hina on Friday. "The minister has briefed me about the course of the investigation today, but I can't tell you more," she said after a regular meeting with Interior Minister Sime Lucin. Adlesic, one of a dozen people who were the recipient of the murder letters, agreed the police investigation in this case was taking too long. The first letter, signed by the mysterious General Hopp on behalf of the so-called Croatian People's Liberat
ZAGREB, Jan 5 (Hina) - According to one of the potential victims,
the police are tightening the grip around the person who, under the
pseudonym "General Hopp", has been making threats with terrorist
actions and assassinations of senior state officials for the past
three months.
"We hope the investigation is nearing completion because the number
of suspects has narrowed," the chairwoman of parliament's
Committee on Internal Affairs and National Security, Djurdja
Adlesic, told Hina on Friday.
"The minister has briefed me about the course of the investigation
today, but I can't tell you more," she said after a regular meeting
with Interior Minister Sime Lucin.
Adlesic, one of a dozen people who were the recipient of the murder
letters, agreed the police investigation in this case was taking
too long.
The first letter, signed by the mysterious General Hopp on behalf of
the so-called Croatian People's Liberation Council, was sent in
late September 1999. The latest one was sent to the media by post on
Wednesday. All the letters called on the military and police forces
to a coup d'etat and threatened with murder the president of state,
the prime minister, other politicians and journalists.
The National Security Office (UNS) declined to comment on the
terrorist threats. A secretary told Hina UNS president Tomislav
Karamarko was not making any statements.
The president of the HSP 1861 party, Dobroslav Paraga, claims he
knows who is hiding behind the "General Hopp" alias and that he has
pressed criminal charges against the unknown person.
Paraga said the police appealed to him not to disclose the name for
the duration of the investigation, but he did say it was an officer
of the ex-Yugoslav federal army, a fellow soldier and associate of
former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.
"It is an older man, pathologically sensitive to anyone he thinks
brings into question the Croatian state he fought for, he claims,
with Tudjman," Paraga told Hina.
An Interior Ministry spokesman was unable to confirm if the author
of the letters was the person Paraga claimed, saying the police were
continuing to look for him.
"In any orderly state, the police would have already found the
author of letters with that content, regardless of the fact if they
were real threats, an attempt to spread fear among the citizens, or
someone's sick joke," said Pavle Kalinic, an expert in political
terrorism.
(hina) ha