May 29, 2013 -- Updated 1543 GMT (2343 HKT)
Six former top Bosnian Croat leaders were handed long prison sentences
Wednesday after they were convicted of crimes against humanity and war
crimes, including the rape and murder of Bosnian Muslims. FULL STORY
May 29, 2013 -- Updated 1400 GMT (2200 HKT)
(File) Bruno Stojic, left, and Jadranko Prlic appear at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2004.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Six former Bosnian Croat leaders are sent to prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity
- The offenses date to between 1992 and 1994, after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia
- The six, who have 30 days to appeal, were part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing, ICTY says
- They used rape, murder and deportation to drive non-Croats from an area they wanted, it says
The offenses, which date
to between 1992 and 1994, formed part of a wider conflict that followed
the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The six were accused at
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia of trying
to "ethnically cleanse" non-Croats from areas of the territory of the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Croat leadership, along
with Croat leaders, wanted to make this territory part of a "Greater
Croatia," said the ICTY, which is based in the Hague.
In order to achieve this,
they carried out crimes against Bosnian Muslims and other non-Croats
that included murder, rape, sexual assault, destruction of property,
imprisonment and deportation, the ICTY statement said.
Jadranko Prlic, Bruno
Stojic, Milivoj Petkovic and Valentin Coric were convicted on 22 counts
of the indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Prlic, the former
president of the Croatian Defense Council and later head of the
government of a wartime Croat entity, Herceg-Bosna, was sentenced to 25
years in prison -- the toughest penalty.
The other three were given prison terms ranging from 16 to 20 years in length.
Two of the accused, Slobodan Praljak and Berislav Pusic, were acquitted on some of the charges against them.
Praljak, a former
assistant defense minister of Croatia and at the same time a commander
of the Croatian Defense Council, was convicted on 20 counts and
sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He played an important role in securing weapons and ammunition for the Croatian Defense Council army, the indictment said.
Pusic, who was formerly
in charge of detention facilities and prisoner exchanges for the
Croatian Defense Council, was found guilty on 18 counts and given 10
years in prison.
Defense lawyers for the six have 30 days to appeal their convictions and sentences.
'Extreme violence'
The chamber ruled by a
majority that the accused wanted to create a Croat entity to unify the
Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later, these areas were to be
either joined with the Republic of Croatia or remain in close
association with it, the ICTY said.
The indictment focused on crimes committed in eight municipalities, including Mostar, the ICTY said.
The chamber concluded
that "in the majority of cases, these crimes were not committed in a
random manner by a few undisciplined soldiers. On the contrary, they
were the result of a plan put together by the (accused) members to
remove the Muslim population of Herceg-Bosna."
Others were also part of
this joint criminal enterprise, it said, and together they secured
personnel and coordinated operations on the ground to carry out the
plan.
In the case of the
historic city of Mostar, "extreme violence" was used to evict Bosnian
Muslims from West Mostar, claimed by the Croats, to the other side of
the city, the statement said.
"Muslims were woken up
in the middle of the night, beaten and forced to leave their apartments,
often still in their pyjamas. Many women, including a girl of 16, were
raped" by Croatian Defense Council soldiers, it said.
From June 1993 to April
1994, East Mostar was under siege and the Muslim population there was
subject to "intensive and constant" shelling which left many civilians
dead or injured, it said.
Other testimony focused
on abuses against Muslim prisoners at Croatian Defense Council detention
centers, including beatings, sexual assaults and using them as forced
labor on the front lines.
The trial, which started
in April 2006, is one the largest and most complex the tribunal has
handled, it said. More than 200 witnesses were called, 145 of them by
the prosecution, and the judgment runs to some 2,600 pages.
CNN's Marilia Brocchetto contributed to this report.
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