ZAGREB, May 25 (Hina) - Croatia's Justice Minister Miroslav Separovic and Interior Minister Ivan Penic on Tuesday announced a press conference for Wednesday at which they will speak about a Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
(HHO) report. In the 200-plus-page report, the HHO lists numerous instances of human rights violations during and after the Storm military operation which in the summer of 1995 liberated a great portion of Croatian territory which had been under Serbian occupation since 1991. After presenting the report in late April, the HHO announced it would be submitted to Croatian state institutions, judicial bodies and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Croatian ombudsman Ante Klaric told Hina on Tuesday he had received the report. He said he could not make an assessment given that the data presented by the HHO was under the j
ZAGREB, May 25 (Hina) - Croatia's Justice Minister Miroslav
Separovic and Interior Minister Ivan Penic on Tuesday announced a
press conference for Wednesday at which they will speak about a
Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO) report.
In the 200-plus-page report, the HHO lists numerous instances of
human rights violations during and after the Storm military
operation which in the summer of 1995 liberated a great portion of
Croatian territory which had been under Serbian occupation since
1991.
After presenting the report in late April, the HHO announced it
would be submitted to Croatian state institutions, judicial bodies
and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
in The Hague.
Croatian ombudsman Ante Klaric told Hina on Tuesday he had received
the report. He said he could not make an assessment given that the
data presented by the HHO was under the jurisdiction of the judicial
authority and the Interior Ministry, which have to determine the
facts.
Klaric added the report could be used by persecution bodies to shed
light on the mentioned cases in investigations.
During his visit to Knin, liberated during Storm, Klaric saw a
demolished Catholic church, and an untouched Orthodox one. "Nobody
has the right to compare us with those who committed crimes against
us," he emphasised.
"There were those who worked to the damage of the Croatian state and
of the Croatian soldier, and it certainly wasn't those who picked a
gun and defended Croatia," Klaric concluded.
The HHO report lists the names of 410 Serb civilians said to have
been killed during and over 100 days after Storm. Also listed are 24
persons who the HHO claims were killed between 1996 and 1999, as
well as numerous instances of "terrorism, violence, and abuse." The
HHO claims at least 22,000 houses were destroyed, set to fire, or
mined during Storm.
The Croatian Justice Ministry last August reacted to an Amnesty
International report, which claimed that numerous crimes had not
been investigated and the perpetrators had remained unpunished, by
stating that a total of 2,670 cases related to crimes committed in
areas covered by Storm had been solved at county courts in Karlovac,
Sisak, Zadar, and Sibenik through the end of March 1998.
The Amnesty International report also brought a reaction from the
Interior Ministry, which stated that 47 murders, of which 26 were
solved, had been reported to the police between the start of Storm
and the end of May 1998. A total of 5,705 criminal acts and 4,215
perpetrators had been reported, of which 2,981 were solved.
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