Orders Capture of Man who Admits to Shelling of Zagreb
(THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, March 8—AP) The war crimes tribunal issued an international arrest warrant Friday for Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic, indicted for bombing civilians in the Croatian capital last year. This is the first time the Hague tribunal has sent an arrest warrant to NATO-led peace forces in Bosnia as well as to U.N. member nations, tribunal presiding judge Claude Jorda, of France, said Friday.
But actually detaining Martic, now living in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, will depend on the willingness and ability of NATO-led forces. NATO has said it could detain indicted war criminals its soldiers came across, depending on potential risks. So far, NATO has made no arrests.
Martic is the former president of the self-styled Republic of Serbian Krajina, carved out of Croatia after fighting in 1991. The Croatian government recaptured the territory in May. He has admitted ordering the bombing of Zagreb in May, and says the attack was meant to protect Croatian Serbs fleeing a Croat army offensive. But the U.N. tribunal, appointed to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, says all the victims were civilians—and international law forbids attacks on civilians under any circumstances.
"In respect of its accuracy and striking force, the use of the Orkan rocket in this case was not designed to hit military targets, but to terrorize the civilians of Zagreb," Jorda said. Tribunal judges heard prosecution arguments for the arrest warrant last week. The tribunal called the hearing after Serb and Croat authorities failed to arrest Martic, indicted by the tribunal two months after the attack.
Prosecutors said Martic ordered two rockets loaded with cluster bombs fired on Zagreb after the Croatian army started driving Croatian Serbs into Bosnia. The cluster bombs exploded in downtown Zagreb, spraying a hail of steel shot wherever they landed. The shrapnel hit a high school, children’s hospital and the Croatian National dance academy. "The shelling of Zagreb was... a terror retaliation and it was unlawful," Swedish prosecutor Eric Ostberg charged at last week’s presentation of evidence.
In a defiant interview with Associated Press Television just days before the hearing, Martic was unrepentant. "I really did order the bombing of Zagreb... and I will never deny it," the former traffic policeman told APTV.
Of the 53 suspects indicted by the U.N. tribunal, only two are in custody. Both are Bosnian Serbs.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
The Indictment Against Milan Martic
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