NOBILO ON BLASKIC SENTENCE IN 'DNEVNI AVAZ' INTERVIEW

SARAJEVO, Mar 12 (Hina) - Some on the Croat, as well as on the Muslim side, were comfortable with Tihomir Blaskic's receiving a severe prison sentence, the Bosnian Croat general's lawyer, Anto Nobilo, said in an interview Sarajevo-based daily Dnevni Avaz published on Sunday. Nobilo said Croat nationalists needed Blaskic's sentence to be able to once again demonstrate and claim the whole world was against them. "Those people never saw Blaskic as one of them, since he had never demonstrated extreme Croatian nationalism, nor been an active member of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union party)," said Nobilo, whose client was recently sentenced to 45 years in prison by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Nobilo claims the Bosnian Muslim side wanted to see a high-ranking Croat general sentenced, and given that Blaskic was the first, the entire blame fell on his shoulders. Nobilo assessed the staging of protests over Blaskic's sentence in Zagreb was aimed at destabilising Croatia's authorities. The ultimate goal of such protests was not solidarity with the convict, he asserted. Blaskic's lawyer confirmed various intelligence services from Croatia had exerted pressure on him during trial, particularly when it came to proving the existence of a double command chain over the units which committed in Central Bosnia the crimes Blaskic was charged with. "High-ranking politicians from Mostar had used those very units for ethnic cleansing and violence on civilians," Nobilo told Dnevni Avaz, reminding Blaskic was the military units' commander only on territorial basis. According to Nobilo, the pressure he had been exposed to was terrifying. His phones were wire-tapped, his family disturbed, agents placed around him, he said, adding the climax was his being proclaimed enemy number one by the presidency of Bosnia's HDZ. HDZ's insisting on having Blaskic defended with the explanation that Croats, defending their homes, could not have committed crimes, was "pure nonsense", Nobilo said. "Myself, and Blaskic, several times during trial said that Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina had committed crimes and that those were major crimes against civilians," the lawyer said. He confirmed his opinion that General Milivoj Petkovic's testimony had damaged his client. In connection with documents on the Bosnian war recently found by the Croatian government, Nobilo said he did not know what they contained exactly, but added he had already forwarded to the government a list of the documents the defence was looking for. (hina) ha