Vatican accused of shielding war criminal
Croat general 'responsible for deaths of 150 Serbs' is being sheltered in a
Franciscan monastery, says United Nations prosecutor
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (LONDON) - September 20, 2005, Tuesday
By David Rennie in The Hague
ONE of the most wanted indicted war criminals is being shielded by the Roman
Catholic Church and the Vatican hierarchy, the United Nations' chief prosecutor
for former Yugoslavia said yesterday.
Carla del Ponte said she believed that Gen Ante Gotovina was being sheltered in
a Franciscan monastery in his native Croatia.
The Vatican could probably pinpoint exactly which of Croatia's 80 monasteries
was sheltering him "in a few days", Mrs del Ponte told The Daily Telegraph at
her offices in The Hague.
Instead, she had been "extremely disappointed" to encounter a wall of silence
from the Vatican. Frustrated by months of secret but fruitless appeals to
leading Vatican officials, including a direct appeal to Pope Benedict XVI, Mrs
del Ponte has decided to make the matter public.
Gen Gotovina, still regarded as a hero by many Croats, is the most important war
crimes suspect still at large from the Yugoslav conflict, after the Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen Ratko Mladic.
She said: "I have information he is hiding in a Franciscan monastery and so the
Catholic Church is protecting him. I have taken this up with the Vatican and the
Vatican refuses totally to co-operate with us."
In July, Mrs del Ponte travelled to Rome to share her intelligence with the
Vatican's "foreign minister", Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo.
He refused to help, telling her the Vatican was not a state and thus had "no
international obligations" to help the UN to hunt war criminals.
Mrs del Ponte complained: "They said they have no intelligence and I don't
believe that. I think that the Catholic Church has the most advanced
intelligence services."
Gen Gotovina, 49, has been a fugitive since 2001 when he was indicted on charges
of crimes against humanity and war crimes. America has placed a pounds 2.8
million bounty on his head.
A former French foreign legion officer, he is accused of overseeing and
permitting the killing of at least 150 Serb civilians and the forced deportation
of between 150,000 and 200,000 others after Operation Storm, a 1995 offensive to
reimpose Croatian control over the Krajina region. The operation was launched on
Aug 4, 1995, but in the terse legal wording of the UN indictment, "aspects of
the operation contuinued until about Nov 15." The indictment alleges that up to
200,000 Krajina Serbs fled or were forced to flee to Bosnia Herzegovina and
Serbia. Croatian forces burned and destroyed homes and livestock of Serbs who
fled, and those who stayed, it states.
Forces under Gen Gotovina are also accused of killing at least 150 Krajina Serbs
"by shooting, burning and stabbing them."
Gen Gotovina's whereabouts are of interest not only to lawyers and historians.
They are at the heart of a political mystery that has divided the European
Union.
In February, the Balkan intrigue took a poisonous turn for Britain when the
general's allies inside Croat intelligence "outed" several war crimes
investigators in Croatia as serving MI6 and United States intelligence officers.
The next month, Britain led a successful campaign to halt the planned opening of
talks with Croatia on joining the EU. Those accession talks remain on hold until
Croatia is found to be "fully co-operating" with the tribunal, an assessment to
be made by Mrs del Ponte.
In the past few days, Austria, Croatia's most fervent supporter within the EU,
launched a fresh attempt to demand that the Balkan nation be allowed to begin
accession talks early next month.
The Croatian authorities have promised to raid any monastery sheltering Gen
Gotovina. But Mrs del Ponte feels little closer to catching him, largely because
of the Vatican's refusal to help. Archbishop Lajolo had even refused an appeal
for the Vatican to act as a secret back-channel of communication to the Croatian
Church, she said. "I asked to have an interlocutor in the Vatican, so I can
share the information that I have, but no, no possibility."
Mrs del Ponte survived a Mafia assassination attempt during her career as a
Swiss federal prosecutor. She now works in The Hague, protected by armed UN
guards.
As a Roman Catholic, she said she was "doubly disappointed" by the Vatican. She
asked the Vatican to repudiate a recent statement by Mile Bogovic, the Bishop of
Gospic and Senj, denouncing the tribunal as a "political court" determined to
distort Croatia's past, and referring to Gen Gotovina as "a symbol of victory".
Archbishop Lajolo told her that the Holy See had no direct authority over
individual bishops.
She added: "Mgr Lajolo said to me: 'Let me know in which monastery Gotovina is
hiding.' I said, if I knew, I would not be here in Rome."
Mrs del Ponte finally wrote to the Pope directly. Several weeks later, she has
received no reply.
At the Vatican, Monsignor Maurizio Bravi, the private secretary to Archbishop
Lajolo, confirmed that the meeting with Mrs del Ponte had taken place. But he
said: "I cannot give you any information on this."
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