ZAGREB, Dec 12 (Hina) - Croatian True Revival (HIP) leader Miroslav Tudjman has dismissed allegations by lawyer Anto Nobilo, the defence counsel of ICTY defendant Tihomir Blaskic, that the former "Tudjman administration" had concealed
documents of key importance for Blaskic's defence.
ZAGREB, Dec 12 (Hina) - Croatian True Revival (HIP) leader Miroslav
Tudjman has dismissed allegations by lawyer Anto Nobilo, the
defence counsel of ICTY defendant Tihomir Blaskic, that the former
"Tudjman administration" had concealed documents of key importance
for Blaskic's defence. #L#
"The Tudjman administration, as Nobilo calls it, did not withhold
any piece of evidence on General Blaskic's innocence. Moreover, it
hired leading lawyers, including Nobilo, to defend General
Blaskic," Miroslav Tudjman told a news conference on Friday.
Tudjman said Nobilo was also wrong to claim Blaskic's defence team
did not have access to documents of the then intelligence agency
called HIS (Croatian Intelligence Service).
"At the time of the process, when I was no longer the head of the HIS,
in 1998 and 1999, Nobilo often visited HIS offices and had access to
all documents," said Tudjman, adding that the intelligence
community had records of this.
"The tribunal in The Hague (ICTY) did not accept any report or
transcript, except those which listed the names of witnesses,"
Tudjman said.
He went on to say that HIS reports which Nobilo was introducing as
'new evidence' (in the ongoing appeals hearing) had been possessed
by the ICTY Prosecution in the Dario Kordic case in 2000 and that
they had been provided to it by the office of Croatian President
Stjepan Mesic.
"President Stjepan Mesic was one of the key prosecution witnesses
in the Blaskic case," Tudjman said adding that "it was Mesic's
testimony and the testimony of Paddy Ashdown on Croatia's
aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina etc. that led to the ICTY
trial chamber sentencing Blaskic to as many as 45 years in prison
(first-instance ruling)."
In the explanation of Blaskic's ruling the tribunal refers 13 times
to Mesic's testimony, Tudjman said adding that "it is today clear
that such a draconian verdict is untenable, and Mesic and Nobilo,
being aware of that, must seek justification for false testimony
and poor defence," Tudjman said.
The two-week appeals hearing in the Blaskic case is underway before
the tribunal's five-member Appeals Chamber. The hearing is focused
on 73 new pieces of evidence which Blaskic's defence team believes
contain mitigating circumstances.
Tihomir Blaskic, a former Bosnian Croat commander in central
Bosnia, voluntarily surrendered to the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on 1 April 1996, when he was
promised a fair and fast trial. He has been in the tribunal's
detention centre since then. In March 2000 he was found guilty of
war crimes committed in the Lasva Valley from mid-1992 to 1994 and
sentenced to 45 years in jail pending appeal.
(hina) ms sb