Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic said on Wednesday it would depend on talks with the European Commission whether Croatia would extradite its citizens to other European Union countries on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for all crimes or only for those committed after 2002, as laid down in Croatia's law on judicial cooperation with EU countries.
"No law has ever been written to protect anyone from any kind of responsibility," Miljenic said at a conference on international legal aid in criminal matters.
Without explicitly mentioning the case of Josip Perkovic, a former Yugoslav secret agent whose extradition to Germany is prevented by the time limit in the Croatian law, the minister said the case had been made into a big story, although it was a very simple legal and technical issue - whether Croatia could have exercised its right and set this matter aside as five other EU countries had done or if it should have done so during the EU accession negotiations.
The outcome of the issue will determine whether Croatia will keep the time limit in question or not, Miljenic said, adding that Croatia should be entitled to it, given that other EU countries were.
Otherwise, there would be a distinction and Croatia would have to extradite its citizens to countries which would not have the obligation to extradite their citizens for crimes committed before 2002, he added.
Every country should have had the possibility at one point to impose a time limit and one should consider if Croatia exercised this right during the accession negotiations, he said. "It's a theory that should be considered and one that is well founded."
The minister expects the Constitution to be amended as soon as possible so that politically-motivated murders were no longer subject to the statute of limitations. "People who committed political murders for any regime can't enjoy the statute of limitations. That's entirely wrong, uncivilised and we will now change that."
As for the opposition to the changes from the ruling coalition's Croatian People's Party (HNS), Miljenic said everyone would decide as they wished, reiterating that it was "absurd" to grant the statue of limitations to somebody who committed a "heinous" murder for a regime.
He told reporters he had replied to a letter from European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding in which she warned that Croatia must withdraw the law on judicial cooperation with EU countries, but would not say what he had written.
He said Croatia entered the EAW system ready when it joined the EU on July 1. "We have things that have been processed, we have people who will be turned over and those who will be turned over to us."
The conference on international legal aid in criminal matters for judges, prosecutors, police and Justice Ministry staff is taking place in Zagreb on Monday and Tuesday as part of an IPA 2008 project supporting a reform of the criminal procedure. The project is worth more than a million euros.
