ZAGREB, Nov 14 (Hina) - Croatian Government on Tuesday stated that it was considering ways to meet the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) about the possibility for some employees with Croatian
intelligence services to testify before the ICTY but without threatening national security in the process.
ZAGREB, Nov 14 (Hina) - Croatian Government on Tuesday stated that
it was considering ways to meet the request of the International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) about the
possibility for some employees with Croatian intelligence services
to testify before the ICTY but without threatening national
security in the process.#L#
The Racan Cabinet said it would not conceal any crime, including the
Ahmici crime, for the sake of the protection of national security.
On the other hand, in view of the fact that this request refers to
some current and some former employees with intelligence services
who could not testify anywhere in the world, their interviews
before the Hague tribunal could lead to revealing methods of their
work and the collection of data.
A statement, released by the Government's public relations office,
said those persons "have no direct knowledge of crimes."
Tuesday's issue of the 'Nacional' weekly published information
that the Hague-based Tribunal had forwarded to the Zagreb
Government a request for interviewing 16 former or current
employees with the Croatian intelligence services, including
former heads of the HIS office - Miroslav Tudjman and Miroslav
Separovic, to check the authenticity of documents about the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Croatia's Government together with ICTY investigators will try to
agree on a model for the detection of all relevant data about a
crime, while the legal order and national interests of the Republic
of Croatia should simultaneously be protected, read the
statement.
Several sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told Hina that
the ICTY Prosecutor's Office had asked for the questioning of a
total of 33 persons from intelligence circles in order to prove the
authenticity of papers which prosecutors had introduced in the
trial against a former vice-president of the Croat Community of
Herzeg-Bosnia, Dario Kordic.
After Kordic's defence several times contended that documents
found while reviewing Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS) papers
in the Croatian state archive were not reliable, the prosecution
wanted to show that those documents had been in the possession of
Croatian official bodies at every moment and were thus authentic.
The Tribunal's spokesman Jim Landale, respecting the ICTY
practice, declined to either confirm or comment on the ICTY's
aforementioned request.
(hina) jn ms