General Ademi May Get 12 Years in Prison

The Zagreb County State Prosecution is seeking detention for General Rahim Ademi, given that his alleged crimes are grave.

The Zagreb County State Prosecution considers the Medak Pocket military operation as a action of liberation of occupied Croatian territory, not as an operation of persecution of the Serb population, as was seen by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the Jutarnji list daily writes today.

Deputy state prosecutor Antun Kvakan says that both General Mirko Norac and General Rahim Ademi were indicted in line with command responsibility for the random bombing of the Medak Pocket region, including civilian facilities. They are also held responsible for their failure to prevent killings, torture, looting and destruction during the military operation.

Kvakan claims that detention is sought for General Ademi because his alleged crime is particularly grievous, which envisages a prison sentence of 12 years.

The Zagreb County State Prosecution’s indictment does not recognise the military operation as a criminal action, contrary to the ICTY’s indictment, which directly accused generals Ademi, Norac and the late Janko Bobetko for their joint, organised persecution of the Serb population, he stressed.

For the county state prosecution, the Medak Pocket is not an ethnic cleansing action, but an action of the liberation of occupied territory, Kvakan said.

He added that the negotiations to take over the indictment from The Hague were exhaustive. It took ICTY’s chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Croatia’s State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic five hours to go over the entire indictment. In the end, Del Ponte personally allowed for the Medak Pocket operation to no longer be considered a criminal action.