Global Policy Forum

Six former top Bosnian Croat officials pleaded not guilty to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. "Not guilty on any of the counts," replied each of the six, who surrendered to the tribunal on Monday, after the 26 counts against them were read out. The defendants include Jadranko Prlic and Bruno Stojic, respectively the former prime minister and defence minister of the statelet of Herceg-Bosna, which tried to secede from Bosnia after it broke away from Yugoslavia in 1992. "I was not the master of war as I have been made out to be in the indictment," Prlic, 44, told presiding judge Alphons Orie. Later the former prime minister of the self-proclaimed statelet asked to make a statement. "I sympathize with Bosnia-Hercegovina and all the victims mentioned in the indictment," said Prlic, adding he believed the truth would set him free. The other suspects did not make a statement.

The UN court has charged Prlic and Stojic, who turns 49 on Thursday, as well as Bosnian Croat generals Slobodan Praljak, 59, and Milivoj Petkovic, 54, former military police commander Valentin Coric, 47, and the head of a prisoner exchange commission Berislav Pusic, 51, with forming a joint criminal enterprise to "permanently remove or ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslims and other non Croats" from parts of southwestern Bosnia to form a "Greater Croatia". Bosnian Croats and Muslims were allies against ethnic Serbs during most of the war, but they turned on each other for 11 months in 1993-1994. The regime of Croatia's late nationalist leader, Franjo Tudjman, gave military and political support to the Bosnian Croats during the war, in which some 200,000 people from all ethnic groups were killed. The campaign of ethnic cleansing alledgedly led by the six suspects included persecutions, deportations and illegal imprisonment of civilians, according to the indictment.

"In the course of mass arrests and evictions, Bosnian Muslims were killed, severely injured, sexually assaulted, robbed of their property and otherwise abused," the indictment read. The Bosnian Croat authorities ran "a system of ill-treatment involving a network of prisons, concentration camps and other detention facilities", the prosecution charged. General Praljak is specifically charged with ordering the destruction of the historic 16th-century bridge in the divided Bosnian town of Mostar in November 1993. Pusic, who is accused of being "a high level official in the Herceg-Bosna system concerning the detention, use, release, exchange, transfer and deportation of Bosnian Muslims" appeared weakened in court. Hunched over and walking with crutches, he told the judge he had undergone spinal surgery last week.