ZAGREB, April 5 (Hina) - Six Bosnian Croats accused of war crimes by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday morning left Zagreb for Amsterdam aboard a regular Croatia Airlines flight.A former prime minister of the Croatian
Republic of Herceg Bosna (HR HB), Jadranko Prlic, former commanders of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), Slobodan Praljak and Milivoj Petkovic, former HR HB defence minister Bruno Stojic, former HVO Military Police commander Valentin Coric, and a former head of the HR HB office for missing and detained persons, Berislav Pusic, left for The Hague in the company of their attorneys to enter their pleas to charges of war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina.Speaking to reporters at Zagreb airport, Prlic said he did not want to prove his innocence before the UN tribunal, but the tribunal had to prove his guilt.Prlic, who was also Bosnia's foreign minister, told reporters in a packed
ZAGREB, April 5 (Hina) - Six Bosnian Croats accused of war crimes by
the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday morning left Zagreb
for Amsterdam aboard a regular Croatia Airlines flight.
A former prime minister of the Croatian Republic of Herceg Bosna (HR
HB), Jadranko Prlic, former commanders of the Croatian Defence Council
(HVO), Slobodan Praljak and Milivoj Petkovic, former HR HB defence
minister Bruno Stojic, former HVO Military Police commander Valentin
Coric, and a former head of the HR HB office for missing and detained
persons, Berislav Pusic, left for The Hague in the company of their
attorneys to enter their pleas to charges of war crimes in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Speaking to reporters at Zagreb airport, Prlic said he did not want to
prove his innocence before the UN tribunal, but the tribunal had to
prove his guilt.
Prlic, who was also Bosnia's foreign minister, told reporters in a
packed VIP lounge at the airport his case would prove that the policy
which he pursued was correct. "It was the most honest attempt to build
a normal, European Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is what it will be like,"
Prlic said.
In an emotional address to some 300 supporters and former fellow
fighters, the former HVO commander, General Slobodan Praljak, said
that bad things might have happened in the Homeland War, "but 98 or 99
percent of it was white, and can serve credit to every army and
nation".
"We are leaving innocent, and we will return innocent. We defended
ourselves, we are not guilty," Praljak told his supporters after he
chanted the Croatian anthem with them.
There were no state officials at the airport. Miroslav Tudjman, leader
of the Croatian True Revival party and son of the first Croatian
president, the late Franjo Tudjman, recalled that seven of ten
officials from the first group of indicted officials of the former
Herceg Bosna were acquitted and voiced hope this would happen in the
latest case as well.
He would not comment on the indictment in which his father and
Croatia's former defence minister, the late Gojko Susak, are charged
with a joint criminal enterprise. "It is obvious that attempts are
made to declare the establishment of the Croatian state a criminal
enterprise, and there is nothing to comment on about that," Tudjman
said.
(Hina) rml