Commenting on the case of Tihomir Purda, a Croatian veteran detained in Bosnia and wanted by Serbia on war crimes charges, Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said on Monday she expected him to be released soon, as it was relevant that Croatian institutions had deposed witnesses and established that he was innocent and that he had signed his deposition in entirely unacceptable and inhumane conditions, tortured and humiliated.
Kosor said no independent institution in any democracy could skip over those facts, adding that as soon as Purda was arrested, she called Serbian President Boris Tadic to ask "that we all join in to help and explain why the Croatian government believes Purda is innocent."
It is impossible that anyone should accept the consequences of the Milosevic regime as facts, one of those consequences being that Purda was taken away from Vukovar, was inhumanely tortured, all his rights were endangered, and now he is a victim again, said Kosor.
Commenting on statements at a veterans rally in Grubisno Polje yesterday, that she was the veterans' mother when she was their minister, but was now their stepmother, Kosor said that some who spoke at the rally were politically manipulated as one of the participants in the rally was a member of one party.
"That stepmother ensured respectable pensions for those three who spoke, with the 2005 law on Croatian war veterans' rights," she said.
Commenting on the mention of weapons at veterans' rallies, Kosor said sabre-rattling was unacceptable when Croatia was completing its accession negotiations with the European Union and celebrating 20 years of independence.
