Friend remembers war criminal Praljak, criticises ICTY verdicts скачать в хорошем качестве

Friend remembers war criminal Praljak, criticises ICTY verdicts

(30 Nov 2017) Mladen Ljubic has fond memories and "a special place in his heart" for Slobodan Praljak, who died after drinking poison moments after a U.N judge confirmed his 20-year war crimes sentence over his role in Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Ljubic met Praljak years before the brutal conflict, when he was still just a film director and came to his southern village to film scenes for one of his movies. "It was honor to know such a man.... he was a soldier, a solider for his people," said Ljubic. When the Bosnian war broke out in 1992, Ljubic joined the Bosnian Croat forces that fought under Praljak's overall command. Although allies against the Bosnian Serbs during the war in which 100,000 people died and 2.2 million were displaced, Croats and Bosniaks also fought against each other for a period of 11 months. "We never attacked anyone, we were defending our homes, I was defending my Mostar," Ljubic said. He dismisses the verdict of the U.N war crimes tribunal that found Praljak and five other former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders guilty of war-time murder, persecution and deportation of Muslim Bosniaks aimed at carving out an ethnically pure Croat ministate in Bosnia. "We helped them, we protected them, we fed them, and they stabbed us in the back," Ljubic said of Bosniaks. He insisted Praljak was a victim of "a special war" waged against Bosnian Croats in peacetime and blamed the U.N judges for his death. "He was made a victim in public view, before the (eyes of the) entire world. How is it possible to...not convict the judges and the court who made him a victim as he stood only 5 meters away from them?" Similar sentiment is shared by hundreds of Bosnian Croats who have been lighting candles in public squares in Praljak's honour and plastered his photos in Croat-dominated cities around Bosnia. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...