The Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal has invited the Croatian government to either provide with answers within 15 days the defence team of defendant Mico Stanisic regarding their request to see the register of Croatian Homeland War veterans or to give the defence team the data they seek.
The trial chamber in the case of former Bosnian Serb interior minister Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin invites Croatia to respond to the Stanisic defence lawyers' request or to make the sought data available 15 days from the service of the order from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Hague-based tribunal said on Friday afternoon.
This order was signed by the trial chamber's president, Judge Burton Hall, on 10 February.
On 7 February, the defence counsel for Stanisic, who is standing trial for war crimes committed against Croats and Bosniaks during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, asked the trial chamber to issue a binding order to Croatia to deliver its Homeland War veterans register.
Stanisic's attorneys said in their motion that they had found on the web site www.registarbranitelja.com the names of some civilian victims identified in the amended indictment against Stanisic.
Some of the alleged civilian victims identified in the amended indictment also appear in the register of Croatian war veterans as members of the Croatian army at the time relevant to the indictment and at the time of their alleged disappearance, reads the motion.
The defence says that in May 2010 it asked the Croatian authorities to state if the information on the web site was authentic and reliable, and to deliver the official veterans register.
In July 2010, the Croatian Justice Ministry responded that the information published on the web site www.registarbranitelja.com was not authentic and reliable information on Croatian Homeland War veterans, that the official information on veterans was contained in the central register of Croatian Homeland War veterans and "cannot be made public or used for purposes other than those envisaged by the Croatian Constitution and most positive laws" and that, therefore, it could not be made available to unauthorised persons and without the veterans' personal consent.
On Thursday, the Croatian Ministry of War Veterans' Affairs said that it had not yet received any request from the ICTY to provide access to the veterans' register. The ministry said in a statement that upon receipt of requests to that effect, only certain data can be made available and not the entire register.
Acting upon requests of official institutions or judicial bodies, segments of data can be made available, ensuring that the confidentiality of personal data is not breached, the ministry said.
