Croatia
Journalist arrested because of blogPosted Nov 1 2007
Croatian journalist, Zeljko Peratovic was arrested on Oct. 18, a day after Police searched his home in Zahreb, and seized his files and computers.
Peratovic was arrested because of his blog posts (peratovic.net and peratovic.blog.hr) relating to war crimes in the village of Gospic in the 1990s. and was accused of revealing a state secret, the AP reported.
Senior Croatian officials met on Oct. 22 to discuss his case, including the Croatian Journalists' Union, the Croatian Helskinki Committee and the opposition Social Democrats, according to Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN.
In one of his posts, Peratovic accused former defense minister Gojko Susak (now deceased) and a leader of the ruling Democratic Union Party (HDZ), Darko Milinovic, of being responsible for the atrocities. Milinovic headss the HDZ's candidate list for the Nov. 25 parliamentary elections, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Peratovic previously wrote for the daily Vjesnik. Because of his work, he has lost his job, has been physically attacked and seen as a traitor by Croatians who refuse to believe that Croats could have commmitted war crimes. He previously reported on death of Milan Levar, an International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia protected witness whose identity was revealed by the police. Levar was killed by a car bomb in August 2000 in Gospic.