U.N. court persecutes, imprisons journalists

Issue Date: www.insightmag.com - Sept. 19-25, 2006

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Journalists_1.htm

U.N. court persecutes, imprisons journalists 

Special to Insight on the News by Katharine Harris 
 
Zagreb, Croatia, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006: Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic lies in a hospital bed following a 33-day hunger strike (picture courtesy of Croatian Worldwide Association).
 
Domagoj Margetic is not a household name for most press freedom advocates, but this tenacious Croatian journalist took on his own government and the United Nations last month in a 33-day hunger strike for the freedom to operate a political Web site.

In January, Croatian police raided Mr. Margetic’s apartment six times, turned off his phone, gas and electricity, seized his laptop computer and disabled his Web site, www.domagojmargetic.com. When Mr. Margetic, editor of the magazine Novo Hrvatsko Slovo, switched his site to a U.S.-based server, lunarpages.com, the U.N. court issued an injunction against that company.

His crime? Publishing the names of witnesses testifying at various war crimes tribunals at The Hague.

“I have committed no crime,” he said Sept. 11.

Many Croatian journalists have followed the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was created by the U.N., with great interest as it’s the one hope the country has of bringing some justice to the crimes perpetrated by and against Croatians during the country’s 1991-1995 war for independence.

But the ICTY’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, seems bent on going after the reporters who, nearly a decade after the trials, are telling the world some of the details. Mr. Margetic is accused of revealing the names of witnesses who testified in 1997 to the tribunal against Bosnian Croat General Tihomir Blaskic. One of the witnesses was Stipe Mesic, current president of Croatia.

Mr. Margetic published the ICTY's witness list on his site July 23 of this year; an innocent act, he said in his statement, because U.N. prosecutors leaked the list to him. The list of witnesses was common information and not sealed until Aug. 22. On Aug. 4, he was arrested and taken to a jail in Zagreb, and sentenced to 30 days in jail without an arrest warrant and with no charges filed.

“As a reporter and journalist, I felt obligated to publish the witness list on my stance and full and complete belief in freedom of the press,” the 32-year-old journalist said.

Then he went on his hunger strike and by the beginning of September, he was delirious from lack of food. He was sprung from jail over Labor Day weekend and was immediately admitted to a hospital to recover from damage to his internal organs.

Journalists have been under fire this year, including the two Fox correspondents who were kidnapped in Gaza in August, the CBS soundman and cameraman who were killed in May in Iraq, not to mention several other TV correspondents seriously wounded in Iraq since the beginning of the year. And those are only the Americans; foreign journalists - who don't have the benefit of a powerful government willing to go to the mat for them - often fare much worse.

In Croatia, press freedom is a variable concept, in that the government is largely corrupt and ruled by many of the same Communist elite who were in power before Croatia became independent in 1991.

What complicates Mr. Margetic’s situation is he’s also president of a political party, the Veterans of Croatia.

The party is not popular with the current government and there’s some thought the government wants to jail the journalist on trumped up charges until the November 2007 elections. An indictment from the tribunal by Ms. Del Ponte against Mr. Margetic, also dated Sept. 11, still stands.

Since 1997, Croatian newspapers have been publishing the names of protected witnesses who have appeared before the ICTY. But last year, for journalists - Josip Jovic, Stjepan Seselj, Mr. Margetic and Marijan Krizic - were indicted by the ICTY for publishing witnesses' names in their publications even though the names were often already available on the Internet.

The indictments packed a maximum penalty of prison sentences of up to 7 years and 100,000 Euros ($121,000) fine; light compared to sentences handed out to convicted mass murderers and planners of ethnic cleansing that ended up in genocide, mass killings and shellings of cities like Dubrovnik.

“Witness protection issues are questions of life and death,” Ms. Del Ponte said in a Sept. 6 statement. “Should witnesses lose faith in the ICTY’s ability to protect them, we might as well close the tribunal.”

To not prosecute the journalists, she added, was to invite others in the media to follow suit.

“Carla Del Ponte is abusing her power to silence one of her top critics: myself,” Mr. Margetic shot back. “Carla Del Ponte is the person who should be indicted and prosecuted for imposing undue hardships and openly torturing and imprisoning an innocent journalist.”

Created in 1993, the ICTY is supposed to dispense justice to war criminals, not prosecute journalists. The situation brings up the issue as to whether the Croatian constitution allows the Croatian judiciary to prosecute journalists per orders from the United Nations.

“He’s very outspoken as a critic of the Croatian government,” said Jackie Prkic, president of the Chicago-based Croatian Worldwide Association (www.croatianworldwideassociation.com), of Mr. Margetic. “The Croatian government knows he doesn’t have money and they first tried to pay him off.”

She had sent out a plea to Clint Willliamson, the new ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues at the State Department, asking for help. But Mr. Williamson, in an Aug. 24 reply, only referred Ms. Prkic back to the ICTY. Insight on the News was unable to reach Mr. Williamson - who is traveling about Europe until Sept. 26 - for comment.

Mr. Margetic’s fiancé, Tanja Remsak, who is supposed to marry him later this month, had no better luck trying to reach Ms. Del Ponte. She did get a hold of Anton Nikiforov, an assistant, who merely told her the matter was being decided by Croatian courts.

“My Domagoj’s life is not a toy,” she said recently, “however, sadly, they are playing with his life like a toy…He only published documents that were public to begin with.”

Reporters Without Borders has been following the situation in Croatia and last fall protested similar treatment given to Mr. Jovic who was also charged with contempt of court by the ICTY for revealing Mr. Mesic’s identity. He spent a week in a Split jail before being released.

"We condemn this sudden arrest of Jovic by the Croatian justice system based on an ICTY arrest warrant, which appears disproportionate to the crime he is accused of and sets a dangerous precedent," the worldwide press freedom organization said. "Considering the mandate of the tribunal in The Hague, which is supposed to try the most serious of international crimes, it is surprising that one of its decisions led to the arrest of a journalist who, even if he did not respect the law, has not committed a crime of violence."

On Aug. 30, the U.N. court convicted Mr. Jovic and fined him 20,000 Euros ($25,650).

"It is a legal absurdity, from the very indictment to the verdict," he told Croatia’s state news agency HINA.

Mr. Jovic said he would maybe rather settle for a prison sentence because he would have to take out a loan to pay the fine.

"A 20,000 Euro fine is not a small thing for me ... so I would even maybe prefer to exchange it for a prison term, because I cannot pay it without going into debt," he is quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse.

Mr. Jovic also has been stripped of his weekly column at the Split-based daily, Slobodna Dalmacija.

Moreover, Reporters Without Borders added, confidential witness information had already been posted on the Documentation and Information Centre Veritas Web site (www.veritas.org.yu) in 1999, and carried by the Bosnian daily Bih Dani, on June 1, 2001. Croatia is a candidate for EU membership but its press defamation law "remains out of line with European and international standards," it said.

- Katharine Harris is a correspondent for Insight on the News.