The Declaration is an insult to all the victims of the joint criminal enterprise, and it is an attack on the truth about the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as an attempt to revise history, said the Association of Concentration Camp Detainees in Bosnia commenting on the Croat National Assembly’s Declaration rejecting the UN tribunal's verdicts for joint criminal enterprise.

“At least 42,000 people were detained in concentration camps formed by self-declared statelet of Herzeg-Bosna, and the facts established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) cannot be rejected or neglected,” the Association said.

“The second instance verdict in the Prlic et al. case because the historical facts just like those established by the Nuremberg trials which were accepted by every sane human being. Rejecting an international court’s verdicts for the joint criminal enterprise represents a historical precedent glorifying and calling for another such horrific crime.”

The Croat National Council (HNS), made up of Croat nationalist parties gathered around the largest Bosnian Croat party – the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), passed a Declaration on the state of affairs of Croats in Bosnia and said that it aims to restore the dignity of the Croat Defense Council (HVO), the armed force that took part in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

The HVO fought a “just and legitimate” war, defending the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina populated by Croats, the document said.

However, the war crimes the Croatia-backed force committed while establishing in 1993 the self-declared statelet of Herzeg-Bosna were “not the random acts of a few unruly soldiers,” the judges of the tribunal in The Hague said when they sentenced six Herceg Bosna leaders to a total of some 110 years in prison.

The HNS’ Declaration shows that individual members of one people are not only unable to express empathy with the victims, but they are also doing everything to threaten the trust between peoples, the Association noted.

“Mutual trust and future can only be built on the truth and by rejecting the politics which formed the concentration camps and supported persecutions, torture, mass murder and countless other crimes,” the association concluded.