Croatian President Ivo Josipovic has said that documentation from the Office of the President was just a part of the evidence on which the judgement by the Hague tribunal in case of Croatian generals was based but not the only one.
According to the summary of the judgement, it can be seen that the said documentation was part of the evidence but not the only one, Josipovic told reporters on Wednesday.
In response to reporters' questions about the role of the documentation which the Office of the President provided to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) while Stjepan Mesic was Croatia's head of state, President Ivo Josipovic said the said documentation was only a part of the evidence and that the judgement should be throughly read before giving any final assessments.
The constitutional law on cooperation with the Hague-based UN tribunal obliges every state institution to cooperate with the tribunal, he added.
The policy of cooperation with the Hague tribunal was launched during the term of President Franjo Tudjman and the relevant law was adopted when he was president, Josipovic added
All subsequent governments, including the ones led by Ivica Racan, Ivo Sanader and Jadranka Kosor, were committed to that cooperation and it is not good to accuse them of working against the Republic of Croatia, he said.
All of them have worked for Croatia, Josipovic stressed.
On 15 April the ICTY trial chamber sentenced General Ante Gotovina to 24 years in prison and General Mladen Markac to 18 years in prison for their participation in a joint criminal enterprise, the aim of which was to forcibly and permanently remove the Serb population from occupied areas of Croatia during and after Operation Storm, launched on August 4, 1995. The Hague tribunal acquitted the third Croatian general in this case, Ivan Cermak.
The verdicts can be appealed.
