THE HAGUE, Nov 11 (Hina) - During their closing speech on Thursday, attorneys of Drago Josipovic, Dragan Papic and Vladimir Santic asked the Hague-based ICTY to acquit these three Bosnian Croat war crimes suspects of all crimes they
were charged with and set them free. Thus their defence joined the defence counsels of Zoran, Mirjan and Vlatko Kupreskic in a statement given a day before that the International War Crimes Tribunal's (ICTY) prosecution did not manage to prove any of counts in their indictment during a one-year trial. Thursday's closing speech of the defence of Josipovic, Papic and Santic was the final event in the trial of the six Bosnian Croats accused of having taken part in the ethnic persecution of Moslems during the Croat-Moslem conflict and of having participated in the massacre over 100 Moslems in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici on 16 April 1993. The Hague Tribuna
THE HAGUE, Nov 11 (Hina) - During their closing speech on Thursday,
attorneys of Drago Josipovic, Dragan Papic and Vladimir Santic
asked the Hague-based ICTY to acquit these three Bosnian Croat war
crimes suspects of all crimes they were charged with and set them
free.
Thus their defence joined the defence counsels of Zoran, Mirjan and
Vlatko Kupreskic in a statement given a day before that the
International War Crimes Tribunal's (ICTY) prosecution did not
manage to prove any of counts in their indictment during a one-year
trial.
Thursday's closing speech of the defence of Josipovic, Papic and
Santic was the final event in the trial of the six Bosnian Croats
accused of having taken part in the ethnic persecution of Moslems
during the Croat-Moslem conflict and of having participated in the
massacre over 100 Moslems in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici
on 16 April 1993.
The Hague Tribunal's prosecutors asked that Santic should serve the
longest prison sentence of 30 years. They demanded jail terms not
less than 15 year for Josipovic and eight years for Papic.
Concluding the discussion, the trial chamber head, Antonio
Cassese, announced that it would take two months for this chamber to
deliberate before reaching a verdict so that the verdict can be
expected in the mid-January.
During the past two days the Bosnian Croats' defence lawyers
asserted that the trial had shown that the indictees had in no way
prepared, planned or conducted the ethnic cleansing and
persecution of their Moslem neighbours. Witnesses as well as some
witnesses of the prosecution and the Tribunal, have shown that none
of the aforementioned Croats was intolerant toward Moslems, and
cases of their efforts to hide and protect Moslems also support
this, the defence said.
On Tuesday the Hague Tribunal's prosecution demanded jail terms
from eight to 30 years for these six indictees, tried at this court
since August 1998 in the case entitled "Kupreskic and others". They
have been charged with crimes against humanity and violations of
the law and customs of war during Moslem-Croat clashes in 1993.
The prosecutors asked sentence terms at least 20, 15 and 12 years
for three brothers Kupreskic.
(hina) jn ms