CROATIA FORWARDS TO ICTY DOCUMENTS ON 50 'FLASH', 'STORM' CRIMES

ZAGREB, March 28 (Hina) - Croatia's Justice Minister Stjepan Ivanisevic said on Tuesday Croatia had forwarded to The Hague war crimes tribunal some 50 processed cases of the most serious crimes committed during and after Flash and Storm. Ivanisevic said Croatia had thus fulfilled its obligations to The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in connection with the two military and police operations. In view of future co-operation, Croatia has established a new Council for Co-operation with the ICTY, the minister told reporters in Zagreb, adding the Council would convene for the first time on Friday. The Council will include a deputy premier, the ministers of foreign affairs, the interior, defence, and justice, the managers of the Office for National Security and the Croatian Intelligence Service, two professors from the Zagreb Law School, and Croatian attorneys who defended suspects at The Hague tribunal. Speaking about the ICTY's jurisdiction over Flash and Storm, through which Croatia in 1995 liberated parts of its Serb-occupied territory, the justice minister said the tribunal could not request complete documentation on the actions, but only that relating to war crimes committed during the actions. According to Ivanisevic, in the tug of war with the ICTY, the former authorities tried to show they were seeing to sentencing the Flash and Storm criminals. "To that end, they compiled the White Paper on co-operation with The Hague tribunal, which lists more than 3,900 criminal cases processed before our courts. The White paper however clearly shows that not one person is suspected of war crimes, but of other criminal acts," the minister said. We checked the list of all crimes and selected about 50 of the most serious, processed and forwarded them to The Hague tribunal, he added. (hina) ha