Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
25
Amnesty International September 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
had been either breached or not fully implemented by
Croatia. These concerns included, in particular,
impunity for past human rights violations, the issue of
unresolved
“disappearances”,
violations
of
internationally-recognized standards for fair trials, ill-
treatment in police custody and in prison, and
continuing obstacles to the return of Croatian Serb
refugees. In its concluding observations, adopted on 4
April, the Committee expressed concern that many
cases of unlawful killings and torture and ill-treatment
following the 1995 offensives Flash (Bljesak) and
Storm (Oluja) had not been adequately investigated.
They noted that the government delegation was unable
to provide detailed information on the number of
prosecutions launched into these violations as well as
the outcome of trials. The Committee then
recommended that the Croatian authorities establish
specialized trial chambers within each major county
court, as well as specialized investigative departments
and a separate department within the Public
Prosecutors Office to deal with war crimes
prosecutions. In addition the Committee raised
concerns about the scope of the Amnesty Law, which
it feared could grant immunity to persons who were
suspected of committing human rights violations.
Again, no information was provided by the
government delegation on how Croatian courts had
interpreted and applied the Amnesty Law.
Further matters of concern to the Committee
were, inter alia, the lack of information on how long
persons were held in pre-trial detention; reported ill-
treatment in prison; the wide scope of slander and
defamation legislation; and restrictions in the Law on
Association which in part violated the right to freedom
of association as guaranteed by the ICCPR.
The Croatian authorities were requested to
provide the Committee with information on the
implementation of the Committee’s recommendations
regarding the most serious of its concerns within a
period of twelve months.
European Committee for the Prevention of
Torture publishes its report on Croatia
In April the European Committee for the Prevention
of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (ECPT) published the findings of its fact
finding mission to Croatia in September 1998. The
ECPT’s visit took place two weeks after the death in
custody of an Italian citizen, Riccardo Cettina, who
had reportedly been severely ill-treated by police
officers in Šibenik. In the wake of this incident, the
Croatian Interior Minister had issued an official
instruction to the head of the Split-Dalmatia police
administration on the use of means of coercion, setting
out a number of measures aimed at educating and
training police officers as well as establishing
recording and reporting procedures and medical
controls.
The ECPT, a non-judicial mechanism whose main
aim is to prevent ill-treatment by law enforcement
officials as prohibited under the European Convention
for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and
Degrading Punishment, carries out periodical
investigations in state parties to the Convention. The
ECPT found evidence of several cases of ill-treatment
which had taken place in police custody, notably at the
time of arrest or interrogation. Furthermore, persons
deprived of their liberty were reportedly inadequately
informed of their right to have legal counsel available
during initial police questioning. Legal provisions for
notifying a detainee’s family during this period were
vague, allowing the police considerable freedom in
delaying this right. The ECPT requested that these
provisions be amended in law and practice in order to
ensure that persons in detention were given adequate
access to them. The ECPT also recommended that
persons who made allegations of ill-treatment, when
they were brought before an investigative judge,
should always be medically examined, whether these
persons bore visible injuries or not. Even in the
absence of such allegations, they recommended that
the investigative judge should seek a forensic medical
examination and inform the relevant public prosecutor
whenever he had reason to believe that a person could
have been ill-treated.
Allegations of ill-treatment in custody
AI expressed concerns in the case of Tomica Bajši
,
who fell into a coma in the night of 10 June in
Karlovac County Prison, where he was being held in
investigative detention. Tomica Bajši
reportedly lost
consciousness around 11.30pm that night, but was not
transported to a local hospital until several hours later.
He only regained consciousness at the end of the
morning of 11 June and was almost immediately
afterwards taken to the Zagreb Prison Hospital, which
refused to admit him as it was not equipped to deal
with patients in such a serious condition. He was
subsequently taken - reportedly back in a coma - to
Dubrava general hospital in Zagreb. Tomica Bajši
’s
family were only given permission to see him on 13
June, by which time he had regained consciousness
again. However, he was unable to tell them what had
happened prior to his collapse as he was suffering
from memory loss, a state from which he has not
recovered since. His family claim that they saw
several bruises on his neck, forehead, chest, and arms.
When his wife photographed these injuries on 14 June,
she was reportedly ordered to hand the film over to a
court police officer. A medical investigation of
Tomica Bajši
by a team of three forensic experts
found that he had suffered a cerebral coma but failed
to establish the cause. Meanwhile, a separate
investigation was reportedly initiated by the Office for
the Execution of Sanctions of the Justice Ministry
with the aim of establishing the course of events which
led to Tomica Bajši
’s coma. Given the possibility
that Tomica Bajši
’s injuries may have been the result
of ill-treatment by police officers or by his cell mate,
AI has urged the Justice Minister to ensure that this
investigation is conducted in a prompt and impartial
manner in accordance with international standards on
human rights, and that its results will be made public.