THE HAGUE, April 6 (Hina) - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Monday afternoon issued a consolidated indictment against former Bosnian Croat military and political officials Jadranko Prlic, Bruno
Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic following their voluntary surrender and transfer to the ICTY detention unit Scheveningen on Monday.
THE HAGUE, April 6 (Hina) - The International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Monday afternoon issued a consolidated
indictment against former Bosnian Croat military and political
officials Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj
Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic following their voluntary
surrender and transfer to the ICTY detention unit Scheveningen on
Monday.#L#
Last week the ICTY unsealed parts of the indictment referring to
Prlic, Stojic, Praljak and Petkovic. After the authorised judge
yesterday unsealed parts of the indictment referring to Coric and
Pusic, the tribunal published the consolidated indictment.
The accused are charged on the basis of individual and command
responsibility with 26 counts of crimes against humanity, grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws and
customs of war committed through the expulsion of dozens of thousands
of Muslims and other non-Croats, killings, rape, deportations,
imprisonment of civilians, inhuman and cruel treatment, destruction of
property and of religious and education facilities, plunder, and
illegal attacks on and terrorising of civilians.
The accused are charged with participating, from November 1991 to
April 1994, in "a joint criminal enterprise to politically and
militarily subjugate, permanently remove and ethnically cleanse
Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats who lived in areas on the
territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were claimed
to be part of the Croatian Community (and later Republic) of
Herceg-Bosna, and to join these areas as part of a 'Greater Croatia'"
or in close association with it, reads the indictment.
"The territorial ambition of the joint criminal enterprise was to
establish a Croatian territory with the borders of the Croatian
Banovina, a territorial entity that existed from 1939 to 1941. It was
part of the joint criminal enterprise to engineer the political and
ethnic map of these areas so that they would be Croat-dominated, both
politically and demographically," reads the indictment.
Among numerous persons who participated in the enterprise, there were
also the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, the late Defence
Minister Gojko Susak, the late General Janko Bobetko, and the late
president of Herceg-Bosna, Mate Boban.
The indictment states that the former prime minister of the Croatian
Republic of Herceg Bosna (HR HB), Jadranko Prilic, 45, was along with
Mate Boban the most powerful official in the political structure and
bodies of HR HB/Croatian Defence Council (HVO) in 1992/93 and had de
jure and/or de facto power, effective control and/or substantial
influence over the Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and military.
The former defence minister of HR HB, Bruno Stojic, 49, is alleged to
have exercised de jure and/or de facto power, effective control and
substantial influence over all parts and branches of HR HB/HVO
operations.
From March 1992 to July 1993, General Slobodan Praljak, 59, a senior
Croatian Army officer, Assistant Minister of Defence and senior
representative of the Croatian Ministry of Defence to the
Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and armed forces, served as a conduit for
orders, communications and instructions from President Franjo Tudjman,
Gojko Susak and other senior officials of the Republic of Croatia to
the Herceg-Bosna/HVO government and armed forces, and from July to
November 1993 he was the top overall military commander of the
Herceg-Bosna/HVO armed forces.
General Milivoj Petkovic, 55, as chief of the HVO Main Staff from
April 1992 to 24 July 1993, and from April to August 1994, exercised
de jure and/or de facto command and control over the Herceg-Bosna/HVO
armed forces.
From April 1992 to the end of 1993, Valentin Coric, 48, was the
commander of the HVO Military Police which regularly played important
roles in administering Herceg-Bosna/HVO prisons and detention
facilities and in combat and ethnic cleansing operations.
Berislav Pusic, 52, an officer of the HVO Military Police, was in 1993
appointed head of the Service for the Exchange of Prisoners and Other
Persons and in August 1993 president of the commission to take charge
of all Herceg-Bosna/HVO prisons and detention facilities holding
prisoners of war and detainees.
The indictment outlines the course of events from the proclamation of
the Croatian Community (HZ) Herceg Bosna on 18 November 1991 on the
territory of some 20 municipalities to the establishment of the HVO in
April 1992 and the HVO's ultimatum to the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina
to withdraw by 15 April 1993 from the three provinces which under the
Vance-Owen peace plan were to be Croat-dominated, and the open
conflict after the passage of the deadline.
When the 15 April deadline passed without the BiH Government acceding
to their position, Herceg-Bosna/HVO forces set about a broad campaign
of persecutions, military actions, arrests and expulsions to enforce
their demands, with more than thirty attacks on Muslim towns and
villages on 16-18 April 1993, including the attacks and atrocities in
Ahmici on 16 April and in Sovici and Doljani on 17 April and other
places, reads the indictment.
The HB/HVO forces, with the support and participation of the bodies
and authorities of the Croatian Armed Forces, started a massive
campaign to attack and cleanse Bosnian Muslims from areas which were
claimed to be part of Herceg Bosna.
The six accused are charged with instigating and fomenting political,
ethnic or religious strife, division and hatred. By speeches,
propaganda and false information, the Herceg-Bosna/HVO authorities
created, instigated and supported a charged anti-Muslim atmosphere,
promoted ethnic division and fostered religious mistrust, reads the
indictment.
The accused are also charged with use of force, intimidation and
terror, appropriation and destruction of property, detention and
imprisonment, forcible transfer and deportation, forced labour and
using prisoners as human shields.
As a result of the Herceg-Bosna/HVO campaign of persecution and ethnic
cleansing, the Bosnian Muslim population in many parts of Herceg-Bosna
was substantially reduced, and those who remained were plainly
dominated by the Herceg-Bosna/HVO authorities and forces, as planned
and intended by the joint criminal enterprise, including the accused.
On about 1 March 1994, Franjo Tudjman and the Herceg-Bosna/HVO
leadership entered into the Washington Agreement, which established
the Croat-Muslim federation and ended the large-scale open fighting
between the two sides, reads the document.
The indictment also specifies areas from where the Muslim population
was expelled, as well as detention camps. It describes individual
crimes and the circumstances in which they occurred and states the
number of people who were killed, wounded or went missing. Reference
is made to a list of victims which is enclosed with the indictment and
which the ICTY did not make public.
The document speaks about several hundreds of people who were killed
or went missing during the attacks, persecutions and imprisonment,
especially about the hundreds of civilians who were killed or wounded
in the shelling of eastern Mostar and at least 135 civilians who were
killed or wounded by HVO firearms during the siege of eastern Mostar
from June 1993 to April 1994.
Each of the accused is criminally responsible for the crimes charged
in the indictment which he planned, instigated, ordered or committed,
or in the planning, preparation or execution of which he aided and
abetted.
In addition or in the alternative, each accused is criminally
responsible for the crimes which were intended and committed as part
of the joint criminal enterprise, in the sense that each of the
accused committed these crimes as a member of or participant in such
enterprise, reads the indictment.
(Hina) rml sb