Former Yugoslav Army Chief-Of-Staff Momcilo Perisic has said that his acquittal by the Hague war crimes tribunal removed the responsibility for crimes from him and the Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb armies and, regarding his conviction in Croatia, that he does not expect to be extradited and that he will not go to Croatia of his own accord.
In an interview with Serbian Radio and Television (RTS), carried by Tanjug news agency on Wednesday, Perisic said the 20-year prison sentence against him handed down in Croatia was unfounded, that he did not believe that Serbia would extradite him, and that he would not go to Croatia.
The Zadar County Court sentenced him in absentia in April 1997 to 20 years' imprisonment for war crimes against civilians committed in September and October 1991.
Asked if he would go to war again in Bosnia and Croatia, Perisic said, "If I were in the same conditions I was in, I and the people I was responsible for, and the people I belong to... Of course I would do the same thing I did."
The Hague tribunal's Appeals Chamber acquitted him last week of aiding crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia from August 1993 to November 1995.
He told RTS the indictment was unfounded and said the fact that one of the three trial chamber judges had voted for his acquittal proved that he was not guilty.
Perisic said the acquittal removed any accountability from Yugoslavia and its army for crimes in Croatia and Bosnia as well as the qualification that the Bosnian Serb entity's army had been a criminal organisation.
He went on to say that his trial in The Hague had no similarities to the trial of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, and that only those unfamiliar with the cases could say that his acquittal was "compensation" for last year's acquittal of Gotovina and Markac.
The Serbian judiciary has accused Perisic of espionage for the United States. He said he was willing to appear before the High Court in Belgrade but that "this case is rigged". He accused his former colleagues from the DOS (Democratic Opposition of Serbia) coalition of that, with the help of "some experts," in at attempt to oust him from politics.
Perisic was one of the leaders of the DOS coalition which deposed Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 and, as of 2001, a deputy prime minister in the Zoran Djinjdic cabinet.
In 2002, when he also chaired the parliamentary security committee, the military judiciary accused him of espionage for the US, after which Perisic resigned as deputy PM.
The espionage trial was held at the Military Court until 2005, when the military judiciary was dissolved. The case is at a regular court now and was suspended when Perisic went to The Hague.
