CROATIA -
THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL, INTERNAL POLITICS
Zoran Daskalovic of the Split weekly Feral Tribune discusses in the July 28, 1997 issue of that magazine the reasons behind the attempts of the Croatian authorities to keep away the documentation requested by the the Hague War Crimes Tribunal.It started with Banja Luka, Bijeljina, Doboj and other cities in the Serbian part of the divided Bosnia and Herzegovina being covered by the posters of Radovan Karadzic with messages in the English language. Among them, also Do not touch him! After that, Busovaca shiwed its support to Dario Kordic, sticking upo posters with his portrait. And while their posters have spread through the Bosnian cities, the biggest catch of the Hague investigators among the Serbs and Croats accused for war crimes have disappeared without a trace. Certain sources insist that Karadzic has left Bosnia in search of more secure terrain, although Biljana Plavsic states that it was actually him who presided over the session of the Main Board of the SDS party at which she was expelled.
While Karadzic and Mladic, spreading the disinformation about their whereabouts are trying to cover their tracks, the hideout of Dario Kordic is covered with silence. Contrary to the writing of the official Zagreb daily Vjesnik, who has negated the information emanating from SFOR that there is an attemptred action to catch war criminals in Vitez, Kordic knows that besides Tango there are other dances in whose rythm he could end up in front of the Tribunal in the Hague, so he moved out of the reach of the SFOR commandos. The same was done by other Croats accused of war crimes, among them also those from the indictment Kupreskic and others, who are incriminated for the crime in Ahmici. Their lawyers are also not aware where they are hiding, being mainly content that in the case of the break of information about their hideout, they will remain out of the circle of those accused of co-operation with the Hague investigators.
Until the arrest of Slavko Dokmanovic, which has uncovered the existence of secret indictments and orders for bringing the accused to the Hague, the perpetrators of war crimes have stayed away from going abroad and from close encounters with the members of foreign troops. Today, they are not safe anywhere.
After the operation Tango, by which Drljaca and war president of Prijedor Milan Kovacevic were to be brought to the Hague, there is a ring of confidence in the words of NATO General Secretary Javier Solana, that those accused of the war crimes will be brought to the Hague before the international peace troops live the region of former Yugoslavia. At the same time, the methods of their arrival in front of the Hague judges will differ. The arrest of Dokmanovic and the operation Tango have dispersed the illusions of the signatories of the Daytong agreement that they will be able to circumvent the accepted obligation about the handing over of those accused of war crimes. This relates to Croatia too. Tudjmans Brioni island promise to the US UN ambassador Bill Richardson that Croatia will hand over those accused of war crimes has not even cooled down for the arrival of the minimal criteria of its persuasiveness - the handing over of Dario Kordic.
This indicates the reasons behind the clamor and furror raised in Croatia again concerning the first instance decision of the Hague Judicial chamber that Croatia and its defence minister Gojko Susak are obliged to present to the Hague court, under the threat of penalty, are obliged to deliver to the Hague Court the documents requested from the Bureau of the Prosecutor in the case of general Blaskic - it only serves domestic needs. If the special NATO units are arresting those suspected of war crimes, if Tudjamans is , for the umpteenth time, promising handing over of the accused Croats, if some of them, like the Kupreskic and others group are volunteering to go- under certain conditions, then the submission of requested documents is only a realization of the agreed co-operation with the Hague Tribunal. If there is an attempt to circumvent and deceive it, than what is to be expected is pressure and thereat of punishment.
In all this, the discussion whether the Hague judges have the right to a subpoena takes scholasitc character. It is clear that Croatia has accepted the Statute of the Hague Tribunal, and with it, the obligation to submitt all the documents neccessary for certain cases. It has also agreed to the provision that the Tribunal can ask the Security Council to punish those who are refusing co-operation with it. In spite of all this, it has refused to send in the documents of the Ministry of Defence.
Moreover, the Government and the Ministry of Defence are obliged to give the documents to the Hague Tribunal not only because of the undertaken obligations, but first of all because of the accused general Blaskic, who voluntarily went to the Hague under the patronage of the Croatian political leadership, convinced that he is not responsible for the crimes he is accused of. The same is stated by the top of the political authorities. Since it is undisputable that the crime in Ahmici has been committed, and at that, by the members of Croatian units in the zone of responsibilty of general Blaskic, the requested material should be the additional arguments in favor of Blaskics innocence.Blaskics lawyer Anto Nobilo has already stated on a number of occasions that as far as the defence is concerned, minister Susak and the Ministry can submmitt the requested documents to the Hague investigators, since they in no way burden his client. So, it is not hard to conclude that the refusal to submmitt the documents is protecting somebody else, and not Blaskic.
That is the reason why this run-around with the Hague Tribunal can break over the back of Blaskic. The indictment is not accusing Blaskic that he ordered and committed the crimes in Ahmici and others in the Lasva valley, but is accusing him, based on the command and control principle, that is, that he did not prevent them from happening, or punish its perpetrators. On the other hand, Blaskics defence is founded on the insistence that the Croat-Muslim conflict in the zone of his responsibility was evolving in a chatoic situation, in which the Croat units were not hierarchicaly organized in a manner that Blaskic as a commander was able to control them. If that is so, that the commanders of the units commiting the crimes are the ones responsible, but also those that had the influence on them, besides Blaskic.
According to some information, the crime in Ahmici was commited by a special unit of the police, commanded from Mostar, circumventing Blaskic and his influence. Joining Mostar policemen were some inhabitants of the Kupreskic hamlet, but then again under Mostar command. Besides the special police unit from Mostar, operating individually in the zone of Blaskics responsibility were also other units, which he supposedly was not able to control. That the Hague unvestigators are aware of this is indicated in the fact that they do not accuse him of the crime in Stupni Dol, even though it has also occured in the zone of his responsibility.
It is obvious that the Hague investigators have a lot of evidence that this crime is in its entirety the responsibility of Ivica Rajic and the units directly under his responsibility. To prove that even according to the principle of objective responsibility he is not responsible either for the other crimes and Ahmici as the central element of the indictment against him, Blaskics defence would have to reveal to the Hague judges who are the perpetrators of these crimes and who was in their command. Based on the hallway accusations by Blaskics lawyer Nobilo, that in order to release his client he will deliver Dario Kordic to the Hague judges, a guess can be made in which directions the tracks of the crimes lead.
If the requested documents extend this trail of crime from Mostar to Zagreb, even at least on the principle of objective responsibility, then the refusal to submmitt them to the Hague and the cries against the subpoena are a last attempt to cover up the responsible ones or the committed crimes. The nalyses of the Statute of the Internatrional Tribunal in the Hague conducted by the legal experts at the time of its inception have suggested that by the principle of objective responisibility the Hague prosecutors could reach at the most thi ministers of defence of the confronted sides if they follow the trail of military hierarchies. What remained doubtful was whether president Tudjman was more exposed in relation to Milosevic and Izetbegovic, since their armies were commanded by collective supreme commands, while Tudjmand was the undeniable supreme commander of the Croatian Army.
In case that the Hague prosecutors gather enough hard evidence about the inter-relation between the Croatian Army and the HVO, as well as their hierarchical objective responsibility for the committed crimes, Tudjman would in that case find himself in a les favorable position from his presidential counterparts, and in that case more exposed and vulnerable in face of political and other pressures of the world for the implementation of peace agreements.
Is the subpoena a sign that the world mighty have taken this trail of pressuring Croatia and its political top to fully comply with its obligations in an attempt to start concluding the implementation of the Dayton agreement ? Through the use of rigorous sanctions they have convinced Milosevic and his generals, and even Karadzic and the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs, to give up on their end goals. They are additionaly breaking them through the use of isolation and practical exile from the international community, so that in the end they would really give up on the seccession and division of Bosnia and to commence the real fullfillment of its obligations. With the operation Tango they have sent a clear message to Karadzic , as the biggest obstacle to their intentions, that at some point he will end up in the Hague, or like Drljaca, under the Bosnian soil.
All in all, the subpoena of the Hague judges is the (second) last chance of the Croatian political top to decide whether it will co-operate in the implementation of the Dayton agreement, even in the part of sanctioning the war crimes, or they will pass, like FR Yugoslavia through the whipping of sanctions of the international community.
Source: Split weekly Feral Tribune, July 28, 1997
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