The Serbian government has called for UN prosecutors to hand over evidence related to two Croatian generals who were freed earlier this week, in a move that has flared tensions between the countries.
The move suggests that Serbia is considering whether to indict the two Croatian generals themselves, after a UN court reversed convictions for both Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, over alleged war crimes that occurred during a 1995 Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm
U.N. War Crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz stated that,
The move suggests that Serbia is considering whether to indict the two Croatian generals themselves, after a UN court reversed convictions for both Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, over alleged war crimes that occurred during a 1995 Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm
U.N. War Crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz stated that,
"evidence collected by my office will remain available to judicial authorities in the former Yugoslavia to facilitate national prosecutions for the crimes committed in connection with Operation Storm."Meanwhile Croatian President Ivo Josipovic commented,
"The fact is that it is not Croatia that freed the generals, but that the highest legal authorities in The Hague decided that our generals are not guilty… It's a matter of respect toward the international community and international law."However Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić responded by saying,
"It's not going well with Croatia… He wants us to talk — me as the president of a nation which has committed crimes, and him as the president of a nation which has not been convicted of anything."
"Croatians know that the crime committed during the Storm is awful, but they still celebrate because no one was convicted… They are a nation on a wrong path."
“When indictment was issued against Ratko Mladić in the Srebrenica case, we did not even wait for the guilty verdict, the (Serbian) parliament immediately passed a resolution condemning the Srebrenica crime. Our government arrested (Ratko) Mladić and extradited him to the Hague. I know it (Srebrenica) was a crime, and I will never say that it was not."
"Croats know that the crime committed in Operation Storm was appalling, and that will be on their conscience for as long as they exist. but now they are celebrating that no one was punished for it. That is a nation on the wrong path, a people that would perhaps now put before a firing squad their own countrymen if they were to say - wait, people, that was a crime”.
“However, it is obvious that we cannot cooperate in a sincere and open manner with a country that celebrates its crimes. It cannot be done! It doesn't go that way! In whose name? On behalf of the victims, on behalf of their children?"Nikolić also commented on Serbia’s potential membership to the European Union and their relationship with Kosovo, stating,
“it would be profitable if Kosovo stayed completely within Serbia, and for me to be president in Priština."
“Kosovo is what Serbia can agree to, and not what the U.S. and some other members of the UN declared (it to be). Kosovo can never be taken away from Serbia.”
