Bosnian Croat Deputy Commander Denies Ethnic Cleansing

Milivoje Petkovic asked the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Thursday to acquit him of all charges, with his lawyer denying the existence of a criminal enterprise aimed at expelling Bosniaks from Croat-controlled areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war.

Presenting an appeal against the first-instance verdict which was handed down in 2013, lawyer Vesna Alaburic said that crimes committed against Bosniaks during their conflict with the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina were not due to any criminal intent, but “a result of the happenings in the field”.

Alaburic said that small-scale “resettlement” of civilians and even deportations should not be necessarily considered ethnic cleansing.

She said that the Bosnian Croat military force, the Croatian Defence Council, of which Petkovic was the deputy commander, “did not attack undefended places”.

She also insisted that there “were no attacks against the civilian population” and that “there was no joint criminal enterprise aimed at removing Muslims”.

Petkovic was the fourth of six political and military leaders from the Bosnian Croats’ unrecognised Herzeg-Bosna wartime statelet to launch an appeal this week and next week against their convictions for crimes against the Bosniak population in 1993 and 1994.

Alaburic told the court that Petkovic’s order, issued in late June 1993, saying that all able-bodied Bosniak men should be disarmed and “isolated”, was legal and legitimate, considering the fact that those men posed a threat to Croat forces.

She denied that Petkovic had any responsibility for detention camps, such as those at Dretelj and Gabela, where the verdict said the Croatian Defence Council detained Bosniaks in inhumane conditions and tortured them before expelling them.

In their reply to Petkovic’s appeal, Hague prosecutors said that the defendant commanded Bosnian Croat units which committed crimes in all eight municipalities listed in the indictment.

Units under Petkovic’s control attacked Bosniak settlements and expelled civilians, in some cases committing mass murders, such as the massacre in Stupni Do, where 28 civilians were killed in 1993, the prosecutors said.

They also rejected defence claims that Bosniaks left their homes voluntarily, saying that the victims had no choice because Petkovic’s forces burned their villages.

According to the prosecutors, Petkovic had knowledge of the crimes committed in the detention camps but chose to “hide them and pretended not to see” instead of punishing the perpetrators.

Petkovic and the five other former senior Herzeg-Bosna officials who are appealing were all convicted in May 2013 of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions committed between 1992 and 1994.

They were found guilty of taking part in a joint criminal enterprise involving Herzeg-Bosna officials and led by Croatan President Franjo Tudjman.

The joint criminal enterprise was aimed at establishing “a Croatian entity whose borders would partially follow the borders of the Banate of Croatia from 1939” through the forcible and permanent deportation of the Bosniak population from eight municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Petkovic, Jadranko Prlic, Brono Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic all held senior political or military roles from 1992 to 1994.

Prlic was the Herzeg-Bosna prime minister, Stojic was its defence minister, Petkovic was the deputy commander of the Croatian Defence Council, Coric was former commander of the Croatian Defence Council military police, while Pusic was the president of Herzeg-Bosna’s prisoner exchange commission.

Under the first-instance verdict, Prlic was jailed for 25 years, Stojic, Praljak and Petkovic for 20 years each, Coric for 16 years and Pusic for ten years.

The defence appeals hearings will continue until March 27.

The prosecution will then lay out its appeal on March 28, hoping to persuade judges to almost double the men’s sentences.

The Tribunal will hear Coric’s appeal on Friday.