Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic has expressed hope that the Croatian parliament will not pass a law declaring null and void all legal documents from Serbia relating to the 1991-1995 Homeland War in Croatia, noting that Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor is using Serbian indictments against Vladimir Seks, Branimir Glavas and others for electioneering purposes.
"I hope the law will not be adopted... the indictments simply can't be annulled by a single law," Vukcevic told the Serbian B92 broadcaster on Wednesday, explaining that he and Croatia's Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic had agreed on how to deal procedurally with the issue of indictments against Seks and others.
"I and Mr. Bajic agreed how to deal with it procedurally because I can't tear up valid indictments just like that. I sent them through our court to their court, so they could be served on the accused and they could submit their objections. Our court was to deal with the objections and possibly reopen an investigation since Seks and four or five other persons have not been interviewed and need to be interviewed. We thought of using at that stage of the investigation the agreement we have with (Croatian prosecutors) and referring the case to them to solve it, while we would be following it," Vukcevic said.
He said that a lot had been achieved in cooperation between the two countries' judiciaries, for example, in the prosecution of the Ovcara atrocity, and that Croatia welcomed the cooperation when it judged that it was to its benefit. However, when that cooperation was perceived to be potentially detrimental to Croatia, a media campaign was launched, Vukcevic said.
Reminded by the reporter that Seks said that Serbia had breached the agreement reached by the Croatian and Serbian public prosecutors, Vukcevic said that this was not true and that the agreement in question was about how to deal with inherited indictments.
"The penultimate case was that of Vesna Bosanac and we closed it. Before it we had the case of Tihomir Purda, which was also exaggerated in the media, and we have only now started the procedure to close the case regarding Seks, Glavas and others," said Vukcevic.
The Serbian judiciary sent Croatia the latest indictments on July 27, they were kept in drawers, and now "Jadranka Kosor has taken them out for the election campaign to wave them as a trump card against us."
Asked to comment on statements by Croatian office-holders, intellectuals and religious dignitaries asking the Hague tribunal to annul the verdict against General Ante Gotovina, Vukcevic said that he considered it an act of interference in the work of the tribunal and a form of pressure, but that he did not believe it would pass and hoped it would not affect the tribunal's work.
