Croats protest in support for hunger-striking jailed Croatian MP

Croats protest in support for hunger-striking jailed Croatian MP

November 2, 2006

Zagreb- Around 200 people assembled in front of a prison hospital in Zagreb Thursday, to voice support for Branimir Glavas, a Croatian MP jailed on suspicion of war crimes and in his seventh day of a hunger strike. The supporters, who came to Zagreb from Glavas's town, Osijek, eastern Croatia, bore banners and chanted his name. They presented him with around 1,600 postcards with messages of support.

Glavas turned himself over to justice authorities last week to face charges of war crimes and influencing witnesses, after parliament abolished his immunity at the request of prosecutors.

Glavas, 50-year-old wartime mayor of Osijek in eastern Croatia, and a close ally of the late president Franjo Tudjman, looked set to become the highest-ranking official to face war crimes charges.

He is being investigated in connection with the murder of eight Serb civilians in Osijek in 1991, allegedly on his orders.

As an official of Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union, which is again in power in Croatia, Glavas served as a parliamentarian, Osijek mayor and defence commander in the early days of Croatia's 1991-1995 war for independence.