Contempt Charges Baffle Croatian Media

A case involving a number of Croatian journalists charged by the tribunal with contempt of court is baffling the media in Croatia and has thrown up questions about the publication of confidential information.

The charges against three journalists and the publisher of a newspaper in Croatia concern the identity of a protected witness who testified in the case of Tihomir Blaskic – a senior Croatian general – at The Hague seven years ago.

While the identity of the protected witness is an open secret in Zagreb and beyond, his name and his testimony remain officially secret under a number of orders from the tribunal banning publication of his details. The prosecution have gone as far as to describe him in official documentation as “a high-ranking politician who holds important state responsibilities”.

“It’s not secret anymore,” argued Vesna Alaburic, a Zagreb lawyer specialising in media law issues, in an interview with IWPR. “Once the public found out the identity of the witness, there is no interest for the court in protecting the witness.”

She points to case law at the European Court of Human Rights involving members of the media, which has acknowledged that there is a difference between the time when a fact was “officially secret” and when it became a “public fact”, meaning, in her view, that the issue of journalists violating a contempt of a court order would no longer apply.

However, the office of the prosecutor at The Hague is continuing to pursue the case, even to the extent of issuing an arrest warrant against one of the journalists who failed to appear at a hearing this week.

Josip Jovic the former editor-in-chief of Slobodna Dalmacija, one of the accused, failed to appear in The Hague, at what was expected to be his initial appearance.

Instead, the judge at the hearing Alphons Orie quoted from a memo he had provided, in which he stated that he believed the tribunal had no jurisdiction over him and “he considers it his right to first under Croatian law use all legal means at his disposal to see if there is any reason for him to cooperate with the tribunal”.

Later the same week an arrest warrant was issued against the journalist.

According to reports in the Croatian media, residents of Split - Jovic’s home town - have started a petition to back him, with the support of the local journalists’ association.

It is thought that Jovic will use Croatian legal mechanisms to fight the arrest warrant, going all the way to the constitutional court.

Jovic, along with another Croatian editor Marijan Krizic, the former editor-in-chief of Hrvatsko Slovo, have both been charged in relation to revealing the identity and the testimony of a protected witness who testified at the trial of Tihomir Blaskic in 1998.

Krizic was in court and pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The two journalists are not the first to have been charged by The Hague with contempt. In relation to the Blaskic case, a total of five media personalities and the former head of Croatia’s security services have all been charged with revealing names or other details of protected witnesses.

According to Jim Landale spokesperson for the tribunal, there are good reasons for protecting the safety and security of some witnesses and therefore “it is important that there are clear penalties for unilaterally deciding to violate witness protection orders”.

The contempt charge carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison or a 100,000 euro fine.

Prosecutors filed a motion last week calling for the cases of Krizic and Jovic to be joined with those of two others previously indicted by the tribunal – that of journalist Domagoj Margetic, former editor of Novo Hrvatsko Slovo and Stjepan Seselj publisher of Hrvatsko Slovo – who have already pleaded not guilty to charges of contempt in connection with the same protected witness.

The prosecutors chronicle, in detail, the alleged contempt by these four individuals in the motion for joinder.

In June 1997, the prosecution says, protective measures were given to a witness who had given a statement to tribunal prosecutors, and whose name had already leaked out in the Croatian press.

The protective measures required that “the accused, his counsels and their representatives not disclose to the public or to the media the name of the witnesses residing in the territory of the former Yugoslavia or any information which would permit them to be identified, unless absolutely necessary for the preparation of the defence.”

In November 2000, Slobodna Dalmacija first published excerpts from the witness statement which had been given to prosecutors in April 1997. In later editions, the paper also revealed the witness’ identity and that he had testified in March 1998.

In December that year the tribunal issued another order saying that all publications of statements and testimonies of protected witnesses should cease immediately.

The same month, Slobodna Dalmacija published the order and an editorial in which it said the order was arrogant and constituted meddling in Croatia’s sovereignty, alongside new excerpts from the witness testimony from March 1998. Through December, the newspaper continued to publish articles and editorials on the issue with further excerpts from the witness testimony.

Four years later, in November 2004, Hrvatsko Slovo also published excerpts, stating that this was the first of ten issues publishing this material.

The tribunal again in December 2004 issued an order requiring the newspaper to cease further publications of the material, after which the title again published more excerpts.

The same month, another newspaper Novo Hrvatsko Slovo did the same.

Hrvatsko Slovo also published an interview in December 2004 with Jovic under the title “I was the first to publish the transcripts of [protected witness name]’s testimony in the Hague”.

The chronology shows the number of times the tribunal has issued orders to stop the publication of the witness’ details. The prosecution hopes it will support its arguments in favour of a joinder – primarily, that there are similarities between the alleged contempts and the connections between each of the accused.

The prosecution is also arguing that the joinder should be allowed because the facts are similar in all the cases, that “Seselj, Krizic, and Margetic explicitly justify their contemptuous publication of confidential information upon the fact that Jovic had previously published the same information”.

They also say that a joint trial would minimise hardship to the witnesses because they would be called only once. This is especially relevant, says the motion, because the main witness in all the cases would be the original protected witness “a high-ranking politician who holds important state responsibilities”, who would find it difficult to appear on several different occasions.

For journalists in Croatia there are a number of interlocking issues at stake including journalist’s rights and the professionalism of the local press.

The president of the Croatian journalists association Dragutin Lucic told IWPR that even though none of the individuals were members of his association, he still felt it was important to defend their rights as members of the press. However, he felt the issue here is not necessarily press freedom.

“It is possible for journalists to write openly about secret documents, if it is in the public interest, but if there is an official protected witness, he must be protected,” he said.

Lucic also argues that “these people should go to The Hague to defend themselves”.

Vesna Alaburic, a media rights lawyer who also lectures in media law at the faculty of journalism in the University of Zagreb, agrees that when there is a question of the courts interests versus public interests, in general the courts interests should come first.

But, she says, because of the circumstances in this case, where the identity of the witness was “a public fact” and because “the witness himself talked in public in general terms about his own statements to the tribunal” there was no longer a reason for the court to proceed with contempt charges.

International human rights bodies are concerned. “There is some debate among Croatian journalists about how to report on politically sensitive cases at the tribunal without unnecessarily jeopardising their safety of protected witnesses,” said Alex Lupis, the Europe programme coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, “as well as some questions about that tribunal’s ability to keep those identities confidential.”

He suggests that those government and international organisations concerned with leaks may be better off focusing on improving their own internal security measures.

“In this case a lot depends on whether the trial and penalty sought by the tribunal are in line with western legal standards,” he said.

Observers of the Croatian media scene also point out that national politics are playing a role, not only because some of the individual journalists concerned are known for their strong nationalist views, but because their original reasons for revealing the protected witness’ name may have more to do with the internal political scene than wanting to initiate a direct confrontation with the tribunal.

“They play like politicians not like journalists,” said Lucic of the Croatian journalists association, comparing the manoeuvring to a political game.

According to a 2004 report on the sustainability of the media covering countries in transition by IREX, a Washington-based NGO, “balanced, objective, and well-sourced reporting is still the weakest point of Croatian journalism”.

The same report also suggests that “biased political coverage is much rarer now than in the 1990s”. However, they say “the powerful influence of the owners and business and political lobby groups to which the media owners belong are a threat to objective reporting”.

Croatia is preparing to host one of the first cases to be referred back from the tribunal to a national jurisdiction, that of Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi. This, at least, should help to put the issues of journalists’ relationships with the courts, and how adequate witness protection can be provided in war crimes cases, into sharp focus.

Janet Anderson is IWPR project manger in The Hague.