Carla Del Ponte – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: One (Two) Serbs Too Many

August 4, 2013 by inavukic 30 Comments

From left: Milorad Pupovac and Savo Strbac
Photo: braniteljski-portal.hr

Croatia’s Homeland Thanksgiving Day (Victory Day) is coming up on 5th August. It’ll be the 18th anniversary of the day the horrible war of Serb aggression ended; Military operation Storm had within a matter of days liberated the Croatian territory that was occupied by Serbs, ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs, thousands lost their lives… It’ll also be the 18th anniversary of Serb denial of their horrid aggression and crimes – their denial almost succeeded in its wicked plan to equate the aggressor with the victim had the ICTY Appeal tribunal not acquitted in November 2012 Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac (and indeed the Croatian leadership) of joint criminal enterprise against Serbs/i.e. forced deportation.

Regretfully, some loud Serbs from within and from outside Croatia still cannot face the guilt of Serb aggression. One of these is Savo Strbac – a Croatian Serb nationalist living in Serbia who even though heavily involved in the set-up and pursuit of Serb aggression in Croatia in early 1990’s “assisted” the ICTY prosecutor to formulate the failed indictment of joint criminal enterprise against Croatian generals. Even though Strbac had publicly stated many times that Serb leadership evacuated Serbs from Croatia – mind you he said that was because Croats would have committed genocide over the Serbs then had Serbs not been evacuated! – the ICTY prosecutor (Carla del Ponte) pressed on with trying to make it as if all those Serbs fled Croatia under the conditions of Croatian illegal or excessive shelling of its Serb-occupied territory (which was disproved by the court).

Here is a record of how Savo Strbac promoted Serb aggression in Croatia: He calls Croatian defence efforts an aggression; he says that Croats never wanted to live with Serbs in Croatia and YET when 94% Croatians voted to secede from communist Yugoslavia it was the 6% of Croatian Serbs (with the help of Serrb led Yugoslav Army) who rebelled and started the aggression, ethnic cleansing and murder because they wanted to live in Yugoslavia and not Croatia…

Dnevno.hr news portal reports that yesterday, 3 August, Strbac had announced in Banja Luka (!) that new evidence has come to light and that it is expected that the judgment, which acquitted Croatian generals of joint criminal enterprise in 2012, will be reviewed. Banja Luka, to remind readers, was the second largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs during the 1990’s Serb aggression and untold horrid crimes were committed by the Serb forces there; and now stands as administrative capital of Serbian Republic entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (And the world tolerates this!)

Strbac said that these new facts were not known to ICTY when the acquitting verdict was delivered against the Croatian Generals regarding Operation Storm. He refers to the remains of 110 recently exhumed bodies around Sibenik and Zadar and concludes that these are the remains of Serbs killed during military operation Storm!

A renowned Croatian lawyer, Zvonimir Hodak, while commenting on Strbac’s latest outburst said that Strbac should go and seek medical treatment. Then Hodak explained some things that are clear to everyone except Strbac:

“Firstly, Sibenik and Zadar have no connection with the military actions in operation Storm, it’s known precisely over which territory the military operations were carried out. Savo Strbac could have dug out some remains near Krapina and said that these were the victims of operation Storm. Furthermore, Savo Strbac and his traitors from Croatia are saying that there were 971 civilians killed, but the Hague tribunal had identified and confirmed 44 killed civilians and that is the valid number that cannot be changed…the new evidence has nothing to do with the territory over which operation Storm occurred”.
Hodak says that this latest outburst by Savo Strbac is “shooting at sparrows with cannons and obvious disinformation of the public from which anger and despair arise”.

Another Croatian Serb Croatia could do without is Milorad Pupovac. One the Serb National Council website he states: “ … Serb national council also remembers destructive consequences of the war upon relationships between people and nations, upon social values and economy. The majority of Croatian citizens have not recovered from these in almost two decades. We condemn the continuance of political use of the war because the way it is interpreted and celebrated rejuvenates and prolongs the war atmosphere and war rhetoric, deepens the ethnic and social divides and stops the public to face itself with its dark side and its destructive consequences”.

Croatian Serb national Milorad Pupovac would like Croatia to:
•   Stop remembering its war dead
•   Stop remembering that it was attacked brutally when its 94% of voters opted to secede from communist Yugoslavia and build an independent democratic state;
•   Forget that it was the Croatian Serbs (aided by Serbia) who did not want to live in Croatia and therefore decided to steal its territory and cleanse it of non-Serbs;
•   Stop celebrating the victory of self-determination

Indeed, Strbac and Pupovac are two too many Serbs in Croatia; in the world. Their political rot is the reason why Croatia must never forget the price it paid for freedom and celebrate victory even more. No one must forget its victims in order to appease the criminal. And, one must take seriously Strbac’s words from the above video where he says that they (Serbs) needed to organise the exodus of Serbs from Croatia (in 1995) in order to preserve their people for a future that is yet to come – Greater Serbia at all costs. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ante Gotovina, Carla Del Ponte, Croatia, Croatia Homeland war, Croatian Victory Day, Milorad Pupovac, Mladen Markac, Operation Storm, Savo Strbac, Serb aggression, Zvonimir Hodak

ICTY Trial Chamber Convicts 6 Croats of Herceg-Bosna – Verdict of Joint Criminal Enterprise Farcical To The Hilt

May 29, 2013 by inavukic 38 Comments

From left: Jadranko Prlic, Milivoj Petkovic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Berislav Pusic, Valentin Coric
Photo: AFP/ jutarnji.hr

Putting the issue of war crimes that may have been committed by individual persons aside, it is absolutely unacceptable and unjust that the ICTY Trial Chamber has today convicted six Bosnian Croat political and military leaders of joint criminal enterprise allegedly involving persecution, expulsion and murder of Muslims during Bosnia’s war as part of a plan supported by leaders in neighboring Croatia to establish a Croat state in Bosnia.

The verdict of joint criminal enterprise does not reflect the reality that was. I.e. Croatia was an ally to Croats and Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina when the war commenced in March1992 with Serb barricades in Sarajevo, aggression, ethnically cleansing of Croats, Muslims and other non-Serb population from the territory the world knows today as the political entity of Serbian Republic within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia took hundreds of thousands (at least 400,000) Bosnian refugees (Croats and Muslims) and provided shelter and care for them at the time when the war of Serb aggression raged across Croatia and forced destitution of more than 700,000 Croatian refugees of non-Serb ethnicity.

Whether the Croat-Muslim conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992 – 1994 constitutes a joint criminal enterprise planned and executed by Croats could truly be justified in reality and justice is now a matter that will surely end up in the ICTY Appeal Chamber.

For, as things stand now this verdict is a farce, just as the one the Trial Chamber had delivered in 2011 against Croatian generals for the Operation Storm that liberated Serb occupied territory of Croatia.

This verdict does nothing but mirror the malicious concoctions and vile cocktails of hatred conjured up in order to blame something or someone for a situation that was a horrible reality that followed when Croatian and Bosnia and Herzegovina dared to seek democracy and secede from Yugoslavia.
To track back to how it was: the Vance Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), named after the international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, first took shape in 1992 and its final version was completed in January 1993. It divided Bosnia into provinces with ethnic majorities.

The VOPP placed some Muslim majority areas under the control of the Croats; the Muslims vigorously rejected accepting this. The Muslims resisted a Bosnian Croat army (HVO) order, first made in January 1993 then repeated in April, to submit to its command in areas that were allocated to the Croats. The Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, had by that time declared their “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna” over much the same areas that were awarded to them by the VOPP.

Croats were determined to assert their command as, indeed, given that Alija Izetbegovic represented mainly the interests of Bosnian Muslims at the time, and Radovan Karadzic the interests of Bosnian Serbs – Mate Boban was placed in charge of the plights and needs to protect the interests of Bosnian Croats.

While Serbs pursued their lines of creating the Serbian Republic within Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bosnian Croat determination to pursue command over areas allocated to them through VOPP and the Bosnian Muslim rejection of this was destined to end up in a bitter conflict between Croats and Muslims in these areas.

I have no doubts that the ICTY prosecution (headed by Carla del Ponte) maliciously constructed the idea of a joint criminal enterprise against Bosnian Muslims so that leadership of Croatia could somehow be pinned to such a constructed war crime. Certainly, such an idea would, I believe, have been sparked and fed by lies that led the world to believe that Croatia’s president Franjo Tudjman and Serbia’s president Slobodan Milosevic had met in Karadjordjevo and decided to divide Bosnia and Hercegovina between themselves. Hence, the utter lie that Croatia wanted to expand its borders into Bosnia and Herzegovina were born and fuelled by people such as Stjepan Mesic (of Croatia) who seemed to thrive on spreading hearsay, gossip and rumours about Tudjman as the truth.

Attempts and now an ICTY judgment to blame the Croats for the situation where even the evidence before the ICTY (when it comes to the idea of joint criminal enterprise) provides a swamp where it’s not possible to bring a completely safe conviction of joint criminal enterprise. Who attacked whom first? Who provoked who first? Whose crimes were the worst?

I guess the easiest thing for the ICTY Trial Chamber was to blame the alleged expansionist aspirations of Croatia for everything. Problem solved!? I don’t think so!

Back to ICTY Trial Chamber Wednesday 29 May: Jadranko Prlic, former president of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), and later of the government of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna, was convicted to 25 years of imprisonment; Bruno Stojić, former head of the HVO department of Defence received 20 years in prison; Milivoj Petkovic, Chief of the HVO Main Staff and later deputy commander of the HVO forces – 20 years; Valentin Coric, Chief of the Military Police Administration and later on Minister of the Interior – 16 years. Slobodan Praljak, former Assistant Minister of Defence of Croatia and later Commander of the Main Staff of the HVO, received a sentence of 20 years of imprisonment. Berislav Pusic, former President of the HVO commission in charge of the exchange of prisoners and other persons and Head of the HVO Commission in charge of detention facilities, was unanimously acquitted of four counts. Convicted of 18 counts, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

A majority of the three-judge panel expressed the opinion that late- President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia was a key member of a plan to carve out a Croat mini-state in Bosnia with the aim of later uniting it with his country to create a greater Croatia, or leaving it as a separate independent state.
Presiding Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said a majority of the three-judge panel ruled that Croatia had overall control over the Bosnian Croat entity and its armed forces and that Croat troops fought alongside Bosnian Croat forces.
The Chamber concluded by majority, Judge Antonetti dissenting, that the ultimate purpose of the joint criminal enterprise was to create a Croat entity, mostly within the borders of the Croatian Banovina in 1939, to unify the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later these areas were to be either joined with the Republic of Croatia, or remain in close association with it.
The JCE as such existed approximately from January 1993 to April 1994.
Apart from the six accused, a number of persons joined, participated in and contributed to the JCE, including among others: Franjo Tudjman, the President of the Republic of Croatia; Gojko Susak, the Minister of Defence of the Republic of Croatia; Janko Bobetko, general in the Army of the Republic of Croatia; and Mate Boban, President of the Croatian Community (later Republic) of Herceg-Bosna. All of these men are dead and have passed away years before ICTY trial commenced – they were not there to give evidence or to defend themselves.

Given that the judgment does not seem to mention Cyrus Vance, Lord Owen, Lord Carrington and Jorge Cutileiro, who had all presented their version, on behalf of the international powers of the day – began to set some serious fuel into the already volatile situation – as to how Bosnia and Herzegovina was best divided by command among the three ethnic groups, one cannot but conclude that this judgment of joint criminal enterprise (relying on false conclusions regarding Croatian expansionist plans) is farcical to the hilt. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alija Izetbegovic, Berislav Pusic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bruno Stojic, Carla Del Ponte, Croat Muslim conflict, Croatia, Cyrus Vance, Franjo Tudjman, Gojko Susak, ICTY, Jadranko Prlic, Janko Bobetko, Jorge Cutileiro, Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti, Lord Carrington, Lord Owen, Mate Boban, Milivoj Petkovic, Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Praljak, Stjepan Mesic, Valentin Coric

Look Who Is Digging Theodor Meron’s Grave!

April 1, 2013 by inavukic 25 Comments

Theodor Meron, President of International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Have just discovered that Stjepan Mesic (die-hard Communist in mind and heart, former president of Croatia, who was the apparent ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte’s “best boy” for political maneuvering of ICTY indictments that would equate the aggressor with the victim in 1990’s Serb war of aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina at any price – even lies and confabulations that would blacken and attempt to degrade the righteousness of Croatian citizens’ right to defend their lives and homes from aggression) and his cronies (such as Budimir Loncar/former advisor to Mesic and current advisor to president Ivo Josipovic – but with a disturbing history in the notorious former communist police OZNA, which ordered multitudes of murders of innocent people during Tito’s Yugoslavia) are behind the “ifimes” (International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies) which has recently published a malicious article “ICTY: ‘Meronization’ of our future”. Stjepan Mesic is listed as Honorary President of staff of ifimes!

Of course, it’s as clear as day: this group of individuals, with this article, are telling the world that if we do not question the ICTY judgments brought down by Judge Theodor Meron, President of ICTY, (especially regarding the acquittals of Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Momcilo Perisic) then there is no real justice!

The problem with this group’s reasoning is that they do not appear to uphold as paramount the appellate court’s responsibility of weighing the evidence and decisions made by lower courts, that they contradict themselves as they strongly suggest ICTY judges must consider political implications and consequences of their judgments, and at the same time that judges must not be political!

Lord, save the humanity from this lot!

They definitely appear to be subscribed to the trends started under Carla del Ponte, as Chief Prosecutor, under Judge Fausto Pocar as ICTY President (who, by the way had a dissenting opinion to the majority one in the 16 November 2012 ICTY Acquittal judgment for Croatian Generals) when the politics of equating the victim with the aggressor was painfully obvious and “order of the day at the ICTY”.

It seems that Meron, by weighing evidence before him with fresh and non-political eyes (as Appeal courts should and have the duty to do) has ruffled the feathers of those who consider cold evidence and interpretation of it less important than political agendas between nations, particularly of, say, the aggressor such as Serbia was against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990’s. So, those who did not like the way ICTY judgments were delivered by Meron started a new trend of labeling him with the sins they themselves subscribed to: political court judgments. This so reminds me of the horrible days under Communism – attack becoming the tool of defence!

This “ifimes” group has the gall to say that Meron is the one who “has definitely marked ICTY as a political court and Theodor Meron as its gravedigger and the executioner of anticipated international justice”.

And yet, just before they wrote this disgraceful sentence they wrote that Meron “should have examined all the possible implications of the partial acquittal in the Karadzic case as well as a series of other issues that have appeared in the final stage of ICTY’s work”.

Now, why should a judge examine all possible implications of his judgment!? Implications of a decision should not and must not influence the making of a decision that is based on evidence and the weighing of evidence with view to the actual alleged criminal offence.

So, “ifimes” group criticise Meron as being political on the one hand and on the other they criticize him for not using politics in bringing decisions in court!

Furthermore, the group admits that Serge Brammertz, ICTY Chief Prosecutor who seems to follow Carla del Ponte’s political lines of equating aggressor with the victim at any cost, is in conflict with Meron. In “conflict between two concepts and two civilisational approaches to resolving international relations: the conservative and anticivilisational concept represented by ICTY President Theodor Meron and the positive and realistic concept represented by ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Bramemertz”.

Can you believe this rot of humanity “ifimes” is peddling!?

The world does not need such transgressions of democracy, human moral code and real justice that Majority Opinion brings to the table as accepted and final judgment in a court case.

For them the Majority Opinion (led by Judge Meron) is conservative and anti-civilisational and the politically driven bias (even with highly suspect testimonies that, if tested, could amount to perjury) Brammetrz appeared as having continued with after Carla del Ponte, is considered by them as positive and realistic!

And now we come to the real motive behind this atrociously biased and political, but insidious article from “ifimes” (Stjepan Mesic & Co.):

“The IFIMES International Institute is of the opinion that the announced discussion on the activities of ICTY which will take place at the UN General Assembly on 10 April 2013 should focus on strengthening international law and protecting the victims of past and future crimes rather than serving individuals and countries whose aim is to (mis)use the international legal system for their own interests”. Or, in other words, let the UN General Assembly debate on 10 April 2013 be the platform where Serbia will receive legitimacy for its rejection of ICTY judgments (as Vuk Jeremic had expressed publicly during past months) and for its relentless politics of justifying the horror its aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had set in motion.

As I said in one of my previous posts, and in my letters to various heads of UN member states – there is a realistic and immediate danger that the UN General Assembly debate on 10 April WILL NOT BE PROTECTING ALL THE VICTIMS, WILL NOT BE AN UNBIASLY LED DEBATE UNLESS IT IS COORDINATED AND FACILITATED BY A FULLY INDEPENDENT GROUP OF PEOPLE.

With such importance being given to “dissenting opinions” as opposed to “majority opinions”, which define the final judgment of a court, let’s not be surprised if we enter a future (after April 10) where the courts will no longer be fully independent of politics, where majority opinion will mean squat, where appellate courts will cease to function, where people can take as valid whatever judgment they want – from majority or minority – where the rule of law, accepted legal standards and democracy (which includes accepting the majority opinion or vote with due grace and humility) will become just a footnote in history books. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

WATCH THIS VIDEO:

Theodor Meron on BBC HARDtalk, March 2013 “…Criminal court must not have a broader agenda … we would not be doing our job if we are guided by how people, nations, community will react to judgments… reconciliation is up to the people … not the court…”. Hear! Hear!