Croatian Journalist Contempt Charges Withdrawn

She says that “in the interest of justice and judicial economy” she’s chosen not to proceed against Stjepan Seselj, Domagoj Margetic and Marijan Krizic, who had been all charged in connection with revealing the identity, statement and testimony of a protected prosecution witness in the case against Tihomir Blaskic, former wartime commander of the Bosnian Croat forces, who was sentenced to nine years in prison by the Hague court for war crimes.



The witness was Stjepan Mesic, now president of Croatia, who was an opposition politician in 1998 at the time and gave his testimony behind closed doors.



However, one Croatian journalist, Josip Jovic, the editor of Slobodna Dalmacija, will still face the contempt charges. He is alleged to have been the first of the four to have revealed Mesic’s name, in his newspaper in 2000.



The prosecution motion to withdraw three of the cases follows a decision by judges denying the prosecutor the right to present one unified case against all four journalists.



The judges had said that the allegations against the three occurred at a different time from that of Jovic – four years later – and at a different newspaper, and were not subject to the exactly the same court orders.



Del Ponte says that her office is “under increasing pressure” from judges to “limit the scope of its prosecutions” and to “exercise greater prosecutorial restraint”.



She admits that the evidence for the three journalists is “to a large degree duplicative of the case against Jovic”.



And she argues that it would only be when presented as a joint trial “as a continuation of the criminal behaviour initiated by Jovic … [that] the acts ….of Seselj Krizic and Margetic …display their true colours and full criminality”.



Judges still have to rule on the matter. The court is under pressure to streamline cases in advance of a UN-set deadline to complete its work, including appeals, by 2010.