Mesic: Need to Determine if Diaries Were Destroyed

The president stressed that it is known who manipulated with the artillery diaries, but it needs to be determined if they were destroyed.

The Croatian president Stjepan Mesic said on Friday, when asked if he knew about the EU demarche concerning the artillery diaries, that he does not claim that the warning did not come, but that Croatia is cooperating with the Hague Court and that it is necessary to determine if the diaries were destroyed and punish those responsible.

Artillery diaries are often forms filled out on ordinary paper. It is up to us to investigate who they were with last, and where they disappeared to. Those responsible for their disappearance need to be criminally processed. I advocate the full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, before which I testified when they called me

President Stjepan Mesic

“I do not claim that this warning did not come to find those diaries” answered Mesic after visiting the hospital in Zabok, when asked if he knows about the EU demarche. According to the media, the cabinet kept the existence of the EU demarche a secret for seven days.

Mesic said that the issue of cooperation with the Hague Court “is not a topic from yesterday”.

Croatia and all of its citizens, based on the constitutional law brought at the time when Franjo Tudjman was the president, and had to cooperate with the Hague, he added.

“Only some of our lawyers do not know this, but they do not have to know law, they need to know how to calculate” he commented when he was called to testify before the Hague court.

“As far as that is concerned, we are cooperating” said Mesic. He also said that as far as the artillery diaries are concerned, it has been determined who manipulated with them, and now it must be determined if they were destroyed or are in somebody else’s possession.

“If somebody destroyed them, which they did not have the right to, they have to be criminally processed, and the state of justice must be included in it now” he stressed.