Praljak Rivals Seselj's Court Antics

Serb right-wingers have long enjoyed the antics of the eccentric ultra-nationalist icon Vojislav Seselj as he vents spleen and pokes fun at the Hague tribunal during his sporadic appearances in its courtrooms.



If a status conference that took place this week is anything to go by, Croat critics of the court may soon find their own source of inspiration and entertainment in the form of Slobodan “The Beard” Praljak.



Like Seselj, Croatia’s onetime assistant defence minister – whose moniker derives from the explosion of bushy white hair that hides most of his face – is currently entangled in a dispute with the court over whether the tribunal will cover his legal fees.



Praljak also shares with Seselj a history of ill-starred efforts to lend support to fellow indictees by testifying on their behalf.



But the most striking parallel between these two formidable personalities lies in their apparently insatiable thirst for self-publicity.



Praljak – who for a time also led the Croat war effort in Bosnia – is awaiting trial along with five other former Croatian and Bosnian Croat officials. They are together charged with playing key roles in a campaign of expulsions, murders and torture of Muslim civilians during the war in Bosnia.



Before embarking on his military career, Bosnian-born Praljak studied in Zagreb, worked as a theatre, film and television producer and lectured in philosophy, psychology and electrical engineering.



He joined the Croatian army in the summer of 1991, as the political crisis in Yugoslavia was gathering pace. By the following April, he held the rank of major general. Asked to explain this meteoric rise through the ranks, Praljak has in the past compared himself to Napoleonic soldiers who were fast-tracked for their bravery.



In his book, Witness to Genocide, on the war in Bosnia, Newsday journalist Roy Gutman described Praljak as “the greatest demagogue and adventurer of the anti-Muslim debacle”. In an interview with Gutman, Praljak once characterised the Croat war effort in terms of the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, the “living space” which Hitler sought in Eastern Europe.



Praljak has in the past been repeatedly linked in the media with the notorious destruction of the historic stone bridge in Mostar in November 1993. He once told journalists, “That bridge isn’t worth even one of my soldiers’ fingers.”



Since then he has denied the allegation, claiming that he stepped down as commander of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, two days before the incident occurred.



After Franjo Tudjman’s nationalist Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, lost power in 2000, Praljak publicly opposed the new government led by President Stjepan Mesic.



He made a particularly embarrassing attempt to assert this opposition in 2001, during a ceremony in the Vukovar cemetery to mark the tenth anniversary of the fall of the town to the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA.



With Mesic half an hour late to arrive – his helicopter circling above, apparently unable to land because of fog – Praljak decided to take charge of the event, leading a recital of the Lord’s Prayer and then parading out of the cemetery. Of a crowd of around 10,000 onlookers, only a few dozen saw fit to follow.



Praljak’s debut before the Hague tribunal came in 2002, as a defence witness in the trial of Bosnian Croat commander Mladen Naletelic, also known as Tuta.



Through his testimony, Praljak sought to convince judges that no regular units of the Croatian army were present in Bosnia during the war there, and that his own role in the HVO was no proof of a connection because his service in Bosnia was “voluntary”.



Evidence produced by prosecutors, however, in the shape of a document which said the then president Tudjman would dispatch Praljak to assist the HVO, suggested otherwise.



And despite his efforts to convince the court that Tuta was not in charge of the so-called Convicts’ Battalion said to be responsible for war crimes in Bosnia, the latter was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.



Praljak’s latest confrontation with the court began when the registry rejected an application for funding to cover his defence costs, arguing that his portfolio included shares in a tobacco company in Bosnia, as well as a house and an apartment. The accused denies all this.



The court’s registry has agreed to subsidise legal fees for the other five accused in the trial, including Jadranko Prlic, the ex-prime minister of the self-declared Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna, who portrays himself as part of the international jet set.



Even Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti, who presided over this week’s status conference, appeared surprised at the decision to deny Praljak financial aid, pointing out that even Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj have access to free counsel.



The vast sums of money behind the defence of such high profile Croatian indictees as Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Tihomir Blaskic has led to resentment from supporters of indictees like Praljak, who feel the authorities have failed to stump up for “a true defender of Croatia”, as he terms himself.



“I think no government should made differences in criteria towards its citizens,” agreed Vesna Alaburic, a lawyer for one of his co-accused.



Croatian justice minister Vesna Skare Ozbolt told IWPR that “there is still no decision from the government” on government funding the defence of indictees. “Their trips to The Hague are paid but a final decision has still not been made,” she added.



If his legal fees are not going to be covered, Praljak says he intends to defend himself in court despite his lack of legal training. In that case, he says he will seek to have his own case separated from those of his co-defendants for fear that his “legal clumsiness” might prejudice their trial.



Praljak also took advantage of this week’s status conference – in theory reserved for dealing with pre-trial technicalities – to dismiss years of work carried out by the prosecution.



Under the terms of his provisional release, Praljak is unable to make political statements, so he treated the court to his analysis of the case against him and his five fellow accused – some 26 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war – saying prosecutors had launched an indictment of all Bosnian Croats as members of a “criminal enterprise”.



Prosecutors told the court that they hoped to call around 400 witnesses and enter some 10,000 documents into evidence.



Judge Antonetti concluded that with the matter of Praljak’s defence still unresolved – and the registry currently making further enquiries into his financial situation – the trial is unlikely to get underway anytime soon.



He also ordered the prosecution to draw up a new pre-trial brief showing clearly how the thousands of documents and witnesses relate to each other and to the charges.



In the meantime, “The Beard” is free to return to the Balkans to enjoy the remainder of his provisional release.



Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.