Minister: We will not allow international arrest warrants. The Government will protect Croatian war veterans, pilots and generals

Minister of Justice and Public Administration Ivan Malenica commented on the confirmation of indictments against Croatian pilots in Serbia and the announcement of new criminal charges against senior Croatian military officials.

“This is an attempt at a politically staged process. The Government has made clear that it will protect all its citizens and veterans, generals and pilots. We talked to the pilots just before the summer, and we're going to meet with them this week. We will make use of all the available legal means”, Malenica said.

The Minister also said Croatia would not allow international arrest warrants to be issued in this particular case.

“This is certainly one of the concrete mechanisms and tools at Croatia’s disposal. As we said to the pilots, we will talk in the coming period and negotiate concrete legal moves with them if any concrete information and data from Serbia comes to Croatia. For now, we only have information coming from Vučić’s media, there is no official communication on this case. Nothing official has come from Serbia yet”, he said.

He also referred to the claims of Serbian victims’ lawyer Dušan Bratić that it is a lie that the rights of the Croatian pilots were violated because they did not have a chance to make a statement.

These are untruths. Croatia has conducted 3,000 criminal proceedings relating to war crimes. We don't have any unanswered letters rogatory concerning Serbia from the past year. Croatia is an EU Member State, it has clearly clearly aligned itself with the European Union with regard to legal order and legislation, so the question is what Serbia is doing in that sense and whether it really wants to join the EU," he said.

The Minister also answered whether this was a reason to block Serbia on its path to the European Union.

“This manner and this legislation of Serbia, the misuse of this quasi-jurisdiction does not become a country aspiring to join the EU. Croatia will employ all the legal mechanisms available. We have highlighted certain criteria, taken certain actions, we will insist that the quasi-jurisdiction be removed and that certain issues be resolved bilaterally,” said Minister Malenica.

Photo: RTL

News