Hague tribunal says Croatia concealing documents about war crimes indictees

19/06/2008

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- War crimes tribunal chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz accuses Croatian authorities of insufficient co-operation with the tribunal, including hiding documents related to the trials of retired Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, the tribunal announced on Tuesday (June 17th). In a complaint signed by Brammertz late last week, prosecutors said Zagreb failed to provide "documents regarding artillery operations during Operation Storm", an ethnic cleansing campaign against an estimated 250,000 Serbs in the Krajina region. Brammertz noted that for the past 18 months, Croatia has been promising to provide hundreds of thousands of pages of documents but has submitted only a few. The trial of Gotovina, 52, Cermak, 58, and Markac, 52, began in April. They face charges of crimes against humanity. (RIA Novosti, Tanjug - 18/06/08; Vecernji List, Jutarnji List, HINA - 17/06/08)