The defence team of general Ante Gotovina has filed amended charges with the Croatian State Prosecutor's Office against three UN observers for suppressing or destroying artillery logbooks from the 1995 Operation Storm, counsel Luka Misetic told Hina on Friday.
"The amended charges contain detailed information from Hague tribunal witness testimonies that the UN carried out the Black Crow operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina for intelligence purposes in late September 1995. The operation was carried out on the territory of a sovereign state without the Bosnian government's consent," said Misetic, who is defending Croatian army general Gotovina before the Hague war crimes tribunal from charges of crimes committed during and after Operation Storm.
UN Military Observer (UNMO) teams infiltrated areas in which Croatian troops operated in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the collected information, including maps and tactical backup plans for Operation Storm, have been found near Bosansko Grahovo in Bosnia, Misetic said.
"The point of the amended charges is, that was an illegal UN operation and those documents wouldn't have been officially archived," he added.
On April 26, Misetic pressed charges against Russian observers Alexander Chernetsky and Viktor Tarusin and Briton Peter Gage Williams for suppressing or destroying Croatian artillery logbooks from Operation Storm, which, according to Gotovina's defence, constitutes a crime against public order punishable under the Croatian Penal Code.
According to Misetic, Chernetsky found in Bosnia in September 1995 Croatian Army military documents about the use of artillery during Operation Storm and gave them to the head of the UN observer unit, Major General Williams, who forwarded the documents to the information officer, Colonel Tarusin, after which they were nowhere to be seen again.
According to Chernetsky's testimony before the Hague tribunal, the maps found were delivered to the UN archive in Zagreb, but Gotovina's defence claims they are not there and suspects the three observers suppressed or destroyed them.
Misetic said "those Hague prosecution witnesses know what happened to those documents" and that the officers who had found them were told by their commander not to submit a written report on the matter.
Apart from those referring to Operation Black Crow, other missing documents include the UNMO's final assessment of the targeting of the Croatian town of Knin.
The unselective targeting of the town, the stronghold of Croatian Serb paramilitaries at the time relative to the indictment, is one of the main counts against Gotovina and two other Croatian army generals, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac.
