Posted on 01/23/2004 8:42:11 PM PST by Destro
Bosnia detains senior Croat nationalists over alleged organized crime
SARAJEVO (AFP) Jan 23, 2004
A senior former Croat nationalist leader suspected of having links to organised crime was arrested by the Bosnian authorities on Friday, officials here said. Police confirmed that Ante Jelavic, who was a member of the country's presidency until he was sacked in 2001, was detained in a joint operation with the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in the southern town of Mostar.
He was arrested along with Miroslav Prce, former defence minister of the Muslim-Croat federation and Miroslav Rupcic, former head of an insurance company.
The state court suspected the three of "involvement in organized crime linked with the Hercegovacka Banka bank case," police spokesman Robert Cvrtak said.
The bank was seen as the main financial backer of a failed autonomy bid carried out by the main nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) headed by Jelavic in 2001.
SFOR confirmed it "provided support to the federation interior ministry in a focused operation carried out between 4:00 and 5:30 am (0300 and 0430 GMT)".
"Three people arrested were suspected members of organized criminal activities acting against the Dayton peace accord" which ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war, said SFOR spokesman Dave Sullivan.
Jelavic and Prce were arrested in their homes in Mostar, while Rupcic was captured in the nearby town of Ljubuski, police said, adding that they were later transferred to Sarajevo.
Meanwhile, three top Bosnian Croat officials, all of the HDZ, voiced dissatisfaction at the detention of the three men saying it had cast doubt over the independence of the judiciary and professionalism of the police, Bosnian television reported.
The arrest of the three is a "clear sign that we cannot have confidence in the independence of judicial authorities and professionalism of the police," Dragan Covic, a Croat member of Bosnia's presidency, Barisa Colak, the HDZ head, and Niko Lozanic, president of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat half, said in a joint statement.
The move to establish an exclusively Croat region in southern Bosnia, based in Mostar, was seen as a major blow to the Bosnia's 1995 peace accord, and Jelavic was sacked from the country's collective presidency by Wolfgang Petritsch, the then international community's high representative.
Petritsch also ordered an international supervisor to take charge of the bank.
The peace accord that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the country into two highly autonomous entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska -- linked with weak central institutions.
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