The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB) welcomes the decision by the French government to not carry out the arrest mandate issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for the arrest of the journalist Florence Hartmann, a former spokesperson for the prosecutor at the Hague.. For more than two years, CNAB has written to ICTY demanding that the charges against the French journalist be dropped because it unjustly punished Florence Hartmann for publishing the truth about behind-the-scenes dealings involving ICTY and the Serbian government.
In her book “Peace and Punishment”, Hartmann wrote about the existence of secret documents, which was already in the realm of public knowledge, linking the Serbian government with atrocities committed in Bosnia, and secret agreements between the Hague tribunal and the Serbian government at the expense of Bosnia and Herzegovina. For this, she was found “guilty” of telling the truth and sentenced to a monetary fine that was converted into days in jail.
CNAB agrees with the French government in asserting that the Hague Tribunal should focus on doing its job by investigating and prosecuting the war criminals, especially the need for swift justice in the cases against war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs during the war and aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina. ICTY should not be wasting time and resources prosecuting those who tell the truth.
Lastly, we demand once again of the United Nations to issue an investigation into the illegal agreement signed with Serbia which denied the justice for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Without justice, there can be no peace and reconciliation in the region. This is evidenced by a continuous ethnic turmoil in the country which threatens the stability of the entire region. This turmoil is also a byproduct of injustice and lack of accountability of Serbia and Montenegro for its policies of aggression in the 1990s.
On behalf of CNAB,
Kemal Hamulic, spokesperson