Croats Showed Readiness to Pardon Rebels

A Croatian lawyer told the trial of former Croat generals at the Hague tribunal this week that the Zagreb government demonstrated a willingness to pardon certain Serb rebels.



Tomislav Penic, the last defence witness in the trial of former Croatian police chief Mladen Markac, was one of the authors an amnesty law concerning Serbs who’d participated in the armed rebellion against Croatia, but had not committed serious crimes.



Many Krajina Serbs were charged with this offence after Croatian forces recaptured the region - held by Serb rebels since 1991 - in August 1995 during Operation Storm.



"The only aim and purpose of this law was to demonstrate political will and readiness to pardon members of Serb paramilitary units not having taken part in grave crimes such as crimes against humanity," Penic said.



Markac is accused, along with generals Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak, of participating in a joint criminal enterprise to drive the ethnic Serb population from the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995.



According to the indictment, Gotovina was the overall operational commander of the offensive in the southern portion of the region, while Markac was in charge of special police units, and Cermak headed the Knin garrison.



Penic told the court that in 1990, as an assistant minister of justice in the Croatian government, he took part in drafting the amnesty law, which was passed in September 1992.



“The legislator was well aware of the fact that some people were seduced or simply manipulated, so that the wish was to demonstrate that such induced behaviour would not be [penalised] unless it had, as a consequence, a severe criminal act or war crime as consequence,” Penic told the court.



Penic also stated that former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was a supporter of the law and played an important role in its adoption.



Speaking about his work with the pardons department of the Croatian justice ministry, the witness said that his task was to take care, in his capacity as an expert and as a professional, of all requests for pardons.



Goran Mikulicic, defence counsel for Markac, asked the witness what these requests were like.



“These were pardon requests, petitions filed by persons who had perpetrated criminal acts since 1990, since the very beginning of the armed conflict in Croatia,” Penic responded.



“This included pleas by desperate people who had taken part in crimes or committed crimes themselves for a variety of reasons.”



Clarifying the legal proceedings, the witness said that all petitions "were systematised according to the kind and gravity of the crime committed. After the petition was completed with the accompanying documentation and an opinion from the judiciary, it would be forwarded…to the president, who would then reach a decision on [whether to] pardon”.



Mikulicic asked for the ethnic background of the persons who filed petitions for pardons between 1992 and 1995.



"There were all sorts of cases, but most petitions related to members of Serb paramilitary units, meaning that they were mostly filed by persons of Serb nationality," answered the witness.



After a very brief cross-examination of the witness by the defence lawyers for generals Gotovina and Cermak, the evidence procedure for Markac was completed.



The trial continues next week.



Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.