In an interview for Novi List daily, which will be ran on Saturday, Mesic for the first time commented on the events following the ICTY rulling against Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac.

Mesic said that in January 2001, the government became the owner of the entire documentation and that all requests for the submission of transcripts went through the government’s office for cooperation with the Hague tribunal.

“Let me be entirely clear. My office played the role of a service in all of that, because the ICTY requests arrived to us through the government’s office, we would locate the transcripts and the documents we found we sent back to the government office which then forwarded it to the Hague,” Mesic said.

As for the Brijuni transcripts, Mesic said this was the document which he is now being accused of sending to the Hague, thus sealing the fate of General Gotovina, which he said was yet another lie.

Brijuni transcripts were not evidence, the audio recording of that meeting is evidence. This audio recording was sent to the Hague by the counter intelligence agency, at the helm of which at the time was Tomislav Karamarko.

Mesic reiterated his belief that the Hague tribunal was necessary for Croatia as the country lacked a political will to process war crimes committed by Croats.

He said there was no doubt that the state leadership knew about those crimes, adding that for a long time he considered to say this publicly.

"But now I will say: I was present when a minister who was a member of the then government and who is also pretty loud today, reported to Tudjman that Serb villages in western Slavonia were being set on fire in three shifts. Literally like I said: in three shifts. I will not name him, because I am not a prosecutor nor a judge, but I remember what I saw and heard,” Mesic said in the interview.