A group of members of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, intellectuals, bishops and other prominent public figures from Croatia and abroad have signed a letter calling on the United Nations' Security Council and the UN Secretary-General to see to it that Croatian Homeland War veterans, detained at the UN tribunal in The Hague and convicted without proven guilt, are set free.
A copy of the letter, signed by over 2,200 signatories, was sent to Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor with a request to forward it to the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council via Croatia's Ambassador to the UN.
The signatories accuse UN agencies of sending Croatian veterans behind bars "because they saved 100,000 Bosnian Muslims in the Bihac safe haven in the summer of 1995, doing that job instead of the UN, after the July 1995 massacre in the UN safe haven Srebrenica."
Academician Josip Pecaric said in the letter to PM Kosor that the letter to the UN was written following "racist verdicts against Croatian Generals (Ante) Gotovina and (Mladen) Markac at the tribunal established by the UN".
Pecaric recalls that by conducting Operation Storm General Gotovina and the Croatian army had prevented a genocide of World War II proportions in the northwestern Bosnian enclave of Bihac.
The letter was written in Croatian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Esperanto.
