ZADAR: TRIAL OF TWO CHARGED WITH HARBOURING WAR CRIMINALS STARTS

ZADAR, Oct 16 (Hina) - The trial of Croatian Army officer Zeljko Stipic and Josip Nekic, a former head of the local office of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order (SZUP) , indicted of harbouring Bosnian Croats suspected of war atrocities in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici in 1993, started on Monday in the Croatian coastal town of Zadar. Nekic is also indicted of abusing his office and powers. At the beginning of the trial, the court questioned five out of six scheduled witnesses, and after their testimonies Judge Boris Babic announced the resumption of the process for 23 October. The court refused a proposal of Stipic's defence lawyer, Ante Nobilo, that custody for his defendant be discontinued, as Nekic, defended by lawyer Milan Petricic, has been released on bail. The prosecution's demand that the hearing be held behind closed doors was also ruled out. The first indictee Zeljko Stipic pleaded not guilty and added that he would stand mute during the trial. The second indictee Josip Nekic also pleaded not guilty but said he would give his statement during trial. Four witnesses - Mile Vujic, a former mayor of the municipality of Jasenice, a local fisherman, Zoran Bilusic, a local garage mechanic, Igor Bosnjak, and Croatian Air Force officer Milan Odak - said Zeljko Stipic had introduced Ivan Vuleta to them, but that they had not known this was a pseudonym for Vlado Cosic, one of four Bosnian Croat suspects in the Ahmici crimes who lived in Zadar with new identities. The fifth witness, Zdenko Martinovic, an employee with the Zadar- based SZUP office, said ex-head Nekic told him and his colleague Djoni Matek to check whether those suspects were hiding in the area of Obrovac, a wider Zadar region. The two SZUP workers - Martinovic and Matek - confirmed that the suspects were living in the area, but their source, whom they did not name, told them that he obtained the information from Zeljko Stipic. After that, they made a report on the matter, but according to Martinovic's testimony, Nekic asked them to erase the name of Zeljko Stipic and the Croatian Army from the report. Martinovic told the court he had not paid any special attention to this request, as it was an usual practice for the SZUP boss to correct their reports. On Monday, the court is to question the witness Djoni Matek, and after that a ruling is expected to be pronounced. Bosnian Croat forces killed more than 100 Muslim civilians in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici in 1993. The international war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY) sentenced the then commander of the Croat Defence Council (HVO) operative zone in central Bosnia, Tihomir Blaskic, to 45 years in prison on the ground of commanding responsibility, but the perpetrators were not caught. Blaskic's attorneys, who based their defence on the claim that there had been a parallel commanding system which Blaskic had no knowledge of, failed to prove their claim. Following the change of authority in Croatia, documents which reportedly shed more light on the case were discovered and Croatian bodies continued the investigation. They recently discovered that four perpetrators had been hiding in Zadar under false identities. Two of them were arrested and two managed to escape. The perpetrators had reportedly been granted new identities, accommodation and residence permits in Croatia by Croatian secret services. (hina) ms