The Croatian Ministry of War Veterans' Affairs, Family and Inter-Generational Solidarity has said that it has not yet received any request from the international Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to have an insight into the register of Croatian veterans from the Homeland Defence War.
The defence counsel for former Bosnian Serb interior minister Mico Stanisic, who is standing trial at the UN tribunal in The Hague for war crimes committed against Croats and Bosniaks during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has asked the trial chamber to issue a binding order to Croatia to deliver its Homeland War veterans register, the tribunal said last Tuesday,
In response to media reports on those developments in the Hague-based tribunal, the Croatian ministry said in a statement today that after receiving requests to such 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 undermined, the ministry said.
The ministry stressed that it had not yet received any request of such kind from the UN tribunal.
Stanisic's attorneys said in their motion that they had found on the web site www.registarbranitelja.com the names of some of the 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 filed by Stanisic's defence on February 7.
The defence says that in May 2010 it asked Croatian authorities to state if the information on the web site was authentic and reliable, and to deliver the official veterans register.
The Croatian Justice Ministry in July 2010 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.
