THE HAGUE, Jan 17 (Hina) - British Colonel Robert Stewart on Monday testified that Dario Kordic was a political leader of central Bosnia without whose knowledge ethnic cleansing could not have been conducted in that area. The
political leadership of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) must have consented to any ethnic cleansing, Stewart said during his testimony before the Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Asked, during the trial of Dario Kordic, a former Vice-President of the Croat Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, and Mario Cerkes, a former commander of the Vitez-based HVO brigade, whether political decisions overruled military orders, the Briton answered it was politics that decided. In my mind it was primary to be the political leader of Central Bosnia an that person issued orders to the army, Bob Stewart added. Such was Kordic's relationship toward the
THE HAGUE, Jan 17 (Hina) - British Colonel Robert Stewart on Monday
testified that Dario Kordic was a political leader of central
Bosnia without whose knowledge ethnic cleansing could not have been
conducted in that area.
The political leadership of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) must
have consented to any ethnic cleansing, Stewart said during his
testimony before the Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal
for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Asked, during the trial of Dario Kordic, a former Vice-President of
the Croat Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, and Mario Cerkes, a former
commander of the Vitez-based HVO brigade, whether political
decisions overruled military orders, the Briton answered it was
politics that decided.
In my mind it was primary to be the political leader of Central
Bosnia an that person issued orders to the army, Bob Stewart added.
Such was Kordic's relationship toward the commander of the Central
Bosnia Operative Zone, Tihomir Blaskic, Stewart claimed.
He added that these two political and military commanders had
worked together, and the military commander needed the consent of
the political leader for everything.
Thus, in the case of the attack on the village of Ahmici, Dario
Kordic had to agree on the plan as he was at that time a political
commissioner, Stewart claimed.
During the Blaskic trial, last June, the Briton asserted that the
commander of the Operative Zone must have known for the plan of the
assault against Ahmici in the Lasva River valley when on 16 April
1993 a hundred Moslem civilians had been killed.
Stewart, a retired British officer, was the commander of UN British
battalion in central Bosnia in 1993 and in April that year he found
out the massacre in that central Bosnian village.
Stewart testified that during his stay in Bosnia he had met Kordic
several times.
From his first encounter in October 1992 when he got an impression
that Kordic was commanding to the end of his deployment in Bosnia,
Stewart arrived at the conclusion that Kordic was the military
commander of Busovaca (a town in central Bosnia) and a person in
liaison with the HVO supreme leadership.
Kordic was inspired with a book on the separation of peoples,
written by Ante Valenta, the retired British officer told the court
and compared that book with Hitler's work "Mein Kampf".
Stewart said he had newer seen Kordic personally involved in any war
crime.
The trial is to continue with the cross examination of the witness
by the Kordic defence.
(hina) ms