The Trial Chamber dismissed the defense motion to order the Republic of Croatia to ‘permanently discontinue’ its inspection of computers and documents confiscated last year from members of Gotovina’s defense team in the search for the missing artillery logs. Croatian authorities must not inspect any documents protected by the lawyer-client privilege and materials the defense has prepared for the trial

The Trial Chamber with Dutch judge Orie presiding dismissed today the motion of general Gotovina’s defense to order the Republic of Croatia to ‘permanently discontinue’ its inspection of computers and documents confiscated from the defense team in an action the Croatian police launched in early December 2009. In its decision, the Trial Chamber added that it also dismissed the motion to order Croatia to desist from further investigation of various members of Ante Gotovina’s and Mladen Markac’s defense teams.

The Trial Chamber issued a similar decision on 18 December 2009. At that time, it was a ‘temporary’ order which has now become ‘permanent’. In the meantime, the defense submitted new arguments in support of their requests. Both the prosecution and the Republic of Croatia opposed those arguments in their respective replies.

The Croatian police launched the action to comply with the order of the Trial Chamber to locate artillery documents drafted during Operation Storm; the prosecution has been asking the Republic of Croatia for those documents for quite some time, to no avail.

The decision imposes some restrictions: Croatia was ordered to refrain from inspecting confiscated documents protected by the lawyer-client privilege and materials the defense has prepared for the trial. This raised the issue of who would decide what the restrictions covered. The judges left it to Gotovina’s defense and the Croatian authorities to agree on that. If they fail to do so, an independent body of the Tribunal will. The Trial Chamber ordered Croatia to keep all information on protected witnesses contained in the confiscated materials under seal.

Finally, in the decision the judges rejected the defense’s request to suspend the investigation and drop charges against the two members of Gotovina’s defense team, Marin Ivanovic and Jozo Ribicic, for hiding and/or destroying Operation Storm documents.

Generals Gotovina, Cermak and Markac are on trial for their role in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at expelling Serbs from Krajina during and after Operation Storm in 1995. The indictment alleges there was excessive and indiscriminate shelling of Knin and other places in Krajina. The evidence that corroborates the allegation can be found in the missing artillery documents, the prosecution has claimed.

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