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Court Hears Details of Greater Croatia Plan
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by iwprhague | February 14, 2011 at 01:46 am
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Prosecution in case of six ex-Bosnian Croat leaders explains how alleged plan came about and was implemented. By Velma Šarić - International Justice - ICTY TRI Issue 679, 11 Feb 11
In its closing remarks this week, the prosecution in the Hague tribunal trial of former Bosnian Croat leaders spoke of their alleged role in a joint criminal enterprise whose aim was to establish a “Greater Croatia”.
Prosecutor Kenneth Scott said that the joint criminal enterprise was led by the then Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, and the nationalist fraction of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, led by Gojko Susak and Janko Bobetko who were joined by the six accused: Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic. According to the prosecutor, all of them were "architects" of that project.
The accused are charged with grave breaches of the Geneva conventions, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including persecution on political or religious grounds, murder, rape, deportation, imprisonment and other inhumane acts.
The six are accused of responsibility for the expulsion, rape, torture and murder of Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats, committed between late 1991 and early 1994 as part of an alleged plan to ethnically cleanse parts of Bosnia in order to later join them to a Greater Croatia.
According to the indictment, the ethnic Bosnian Croat authorities of the self-declared state of Herceg-Bosna created, instigated and supported "a charged anti-Muslim atmosphere, promoted ethnic division and fostered religious mistrust".
Scott said that the joint criminal enterprise was organised by the Croatian state leadership whose intention it was to win territories and establish a homogenous ethnically Croat territory.
The prosecutor said that it was because of Tudjman's obsession with the Banovina of Croatia (a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1939 and 1943, which included much of present-day Croatia along with portions of Bosnia and Serbia) that Bosnia had to be divided.
Scott said that it was this idea which was accepted by a small military and political elite of the Bosnian Croats led by Mate Boban. The prosecutor added that the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, had accepted, supported and implemented the plans of the then Croatian president aimed at the territorial division of Bosnia.
The prosecutor said at the beginning of his closing statement that "the plan was to ultimately join the areas which were included in Herceg-Bosna into Croatia".
"Herceg-Bosna officials were not elected, there had been no referendum to choose them. All the commands came directly from above, from President Tudjman himself," Scott pointed out.
Tudjman died in 1999. It has been confirmed on various occasions by Hague tribunal officials that, had he lived longer, he would have been indicted.
"It was a top-down project, devised, planned, prepared, managed and implemented from the top down. These people here are parts of the team who designed, shaped, built and implemented the project," the prosecutor said.
"That's how the war with Muslims was started, a war for territories," he went on, pointing out that "it wasn't just about winning territories, it was also about ensuring a demographic majority".
In his final words, Scott spoke of some of the crimes committed by the HVO in Bosnia during 1993.
According to the prosecutor, "these horrible events were the result of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at the political and military destruction of Muslim and other non-Croat populations from parts of the Bosnian territory which were supposed to become part of a Greater Croatia".
"The Croats," according to him, "wanted their own sovereign area, a 'real-estate with borders', which was supposed to have a Croatian demographic majority at the expense of other nations."
He also pointed out that "all decrees on detention and expulsion of non-Croats and of their forced transfer outside of Herceg-Bosna were made [from] the top".
Scott then quoted several alleged remarks by Prlic, Praljak and Petkovic to prove that their aim was "to ultimately join the conquered and cleaned ethnic territory to Croatia".
"Prlic had confirmed that the military units of the HVO had committed crimes, so it has become pretty clear that the military units of the HVO and the members of these units had to be held responsible, as have the authorities of Herceg-Bosna which were in charge of them," the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor then turned his attention to the final element of the joint criminal enterprise.
"An ever important part of the realisation of the project was Croatianness," said the prosecutor, pointing out that Herceg-Bosna was itself named “a Croat community”, or “a Croat Republic”; the army was named the “Croatian Defence Council", and the currency was Croatian. "Everything was supposed to seem and feel Croat," the prosecutor said.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 12:10 on February 14th, 2011
at 12:42 on February 14th, 2011
The statement “history repeats itself” is clearly illustrated in the vile rhetoric of what Kenneth Scott wants others to believe as fact that he presented in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Netherlands at the Hague Tribunal. Not to mention, coinciding with the inflammatory and false allegations made in the expose aired on Dutch programming about the Croatian hero General Ante Gotovina. The expose and its nefarious message is just one of thousands of attempts to discredit the heroes of the fight for Croatian Independence and the right of its people to self determination. Not to mention, it was aired and developed in a country that applauded and honored its military’s action assigned to the United Nations that allowed Serbian aggressors unabated access to rape and murder thousands of innocent people that they were ordered to protect. However, the intentional mistruths and guided inflammatory statements made by Kenneth Scott in his verbal tirade in the courtroom, illustrated once again to all Croatians that even after decades of persecution, false prosecution and erroneous propaganda against it’s people, those who can, will attempt to distort recent historical facts and falsely depict a people that defended their country and their rights to exist.
Kenneth Scott, with his recent diatribe to the court condemns the Croatian people from a standpoint that claims the goal of Croatian Independence was for the creation of a “Greater Croatian State.” This false truth “propaganda” was conceived at the beginning stages of the Croatian fight for self determination to resurrect the malevolent propaganda of the past to support their current platform of preventing the Croatian people of a free and independent state. Well before the enslavement of the Croatian people as dictated in the Treaty of Versailles and hence thereafter, the Croatian people have been forced to fight to protect themselves and their country from those who wished to create “Greater Boundaries” and the eventual eradication of the Croatian culture and identity. This was recently displayed on a global view when the United States along with Great Britain and France “and others” imposed an arms embargo on a country that no longer existed. The intent of the “arms embargo” which was displayed on a global stage was to prevent the Croatian people from the ability to defend themselves against the Serbian Army not the Yugoslavian Army whose goal was to create a “Greater Serbia” and the eradication of the Croatian People. To indict Jadranko Prlic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Pekovic, Bruno Stojic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic as war criminals is a compulsory action undertaken by those who continue to refuse to recognize a Croatian State and maintain the desire to continue the proliferation of their venomous propaganda against the history of its people. These men defended their country against an aggressor bent on the eradication of a country and its people. To date, only the Croatian people and its defenders of the right to self determination have been prosecuted in court as a result of their defensive stance against an aggressor. No Serbian military or civilian that engaged in the act of “ethnic cleansing” for a “Greater Serbia” or military personnel from U.N. forces i.e. Netherlands, Canada, France, Great Britain, that watched and allowed the rape, torture and murder of civilians by Serbian forces has been brought to trial or have had charges levied against them to the level of the Croatian people who fought to defend their right to self determination within the independent state of Croatia. Kenneth Scott, your erroneous denunciation of the facts regarding the intent of the Croatian people during the period of time in which Croatian civilians were being exterminated for the goal of a greater Serbia makes the grounds of Bleiburg and Vukovar rumble with discontent. We recognize that you and those that supported the creation of a Greater Serbia have used the platform of the Hague Tribunal to proliferate your condemnation of Croatia and it’s people to recreate a present day environment to continue to obscure the true facts of the past as well as the present as it pertains to Croatian History. History does repeat itself..