The defence team for Croatian Defence Council (HVO) commander Slobodan Praljak will ask in their closing statement that their client be acquitted because they believe that the prosecution did not prove his guilt, defence attorney Bozo Kovacic told media. According to Kovacic, the same request will be made by defence teams for the other five former officials of the Croat Republic of Herceg Bosna - Prime Minister Jadranko Prlic, Defence Minister Bruno Stojic, HVO Military Police commander Valentin Coric, the HVO commander, General Milivoj Petkovic, and the head of the commission for the exchange of prisoners of war, Berislav Pusic.

Kovacic said that the defence entirely dismissed the prosecution's allegation about the existence of a joint criminal enterprise headed by Croatia's first president, Franjo Tudjman, as well as its theory that Croatia was the master of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As for the credibility of the prosecution's allegations about Croatia's intentions in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is sufficient to say that more people from Croatia joined the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina than the HVO, with the approval of the authorities, said Kovacic.

The defence said in the trial that it was not Croatia, but Croatian forces, that fought the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) across the entire battlefield that covered Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The trial started on 26 April 2006 on charges of crimes against humanity committed against Bosniaks and other non-Croats in areas which the prosecution alleges the accused wanted to annex to Croatia. The six men were all charged with participation in a joint criminal enterprise designed to expel the Muslim (Bosniak) population from the territory of self-proclaimed Herceg Bosna with the aim of annexing it to the Republic of Croatia.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Kenneth Scott ascribed most responsibility for crimes committed in the 1993/1994 ethnic cleansing campaign in Herceg Bosna to Franjo Tudjman and his policy of carving up Bosnia and Herzegovina to restore the borders of the 1939 Banovina of Croatia, treating the six accused as mere executors of the policy dictated by the authorities in Zagreb.

The territorial ambition of the joint criminal enterprise was the Banovina of Croatia and participating in it, along with the six accused, were also Tudjman, late defence minister Gojko Susak, General Janko Bobetko and Mato Boban, war crimes convicts Dario Kordic, Tihomir Blaskic, Mladen Naletilic Tuta and others, Scott said at the time.

The six former leaders of the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are charged according to personal and command responsibility for crimes against humanity, grave violations of the Geneva Conventions and breaches of laws and customs of war committed through the expulsion of several dozen thousand Bosniaks and other non-Croats, killings, rape, deportation, detention of civilians, inhumane and cruel treatment, property destruction, destruction of religious and educational buildings, plunder, and terrorising of civilians.