Tomislav Kuzmanovic, Mladen Markac's new defence attorney, with one of his three daughters wearing the jersey of the Croatian National Football Team After the officially dismissal last week of Miroslav Separovic from the defence team representing Mladen Markac, the general will be represented before the Hague Tribunal by Tomislav Kuzmanovic, a US attorney with Croatian roots. On Monday, 6 May, Nacional received confirmation that the search for Markac's new attorney, which had been ongoing for several months, ended last week with the selection of Kuzmanovic, who is to be appointed officially only with the start of autumn, when the start of the trials of generals Markac, Cermak and Gotovina is scheduled.

The search for Markac's new attorney started a few months ago, at the time when the process of establishing Separovic's conflict of interest was launched. At first secretly, not wishing to prejudice the ruling of the Hague Tribunal, Markac's attorneys started a wide search, rendered difficult by the specific characteristics a potential candidate would have to posses: the search was on for a Croat, i.e. someone fluent in Croatian, but who received their legal education abroad since, besides a knowledge of the Croatian legal system, at the Hague Tribunal it is much more important to have a solid background in Anglo-Saxon Law. Over the past month the selection had been narrowed to a few names, followed by the selection of Tomislav Kuzmanovic as the most perspective candidate. As is an American lawyer with Croatian parents, Kuzmanovic speaks Croatian well, his particular advantage being that he is not unfamiliar with the Hague Tribunal – he has already represented defendants there from 1998 to 2003. It was there in fact that he was noticed by Markac's attorney Goran Mikulicic, with whom he is on friendly terms some ten years now and whose opinion very likely weighed in most in Kuzmanovic's becoming Markac's new lawyer. As the official ban on Separovic's continued representation of Mladen Markac was announced only last week, speculation started on the weekend on his replacement, but it will be a few months still before Tomislav Kuzmanovic is in fact officially appointed. It is only over the next couple of days that Kuzmanovic will come to Zagreb to hammer out the details of his assuming the defence of Mladen Markac, which will be followed by the extensive procedure of his accreditation before the Hague Tribunal, likely to last through to September, when, besides, the trials of Markac, Cermak and Gotovina should open.

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Tomislav Kuzmanovic, General Markac's new defence counsel, has up to now remained generally unknown to the Croatian public. Among Croatian emigrants in the US, however, and in US legal circles, he is reputed to be a very talented legal expert, and a great advocate of Croatia, active in numerous Croatian organisations in the US, and a person with a deep respect of the late President Tudjman and of Gojko Susak. For his contribution to Croatia Tudjman in 1996 conferred upon him the Order of the Croatian Braid.

TOMISLAV KUZMANOVIC was born in Milwaukee, and is reputed among Croatian Americans as a competent expert always willing to help anybody outHe was born in Milwaukee in 1964 to a typical emigrant family. His mother Ivanka, a native of Cista Prova, and father Boris, a native of Zagreb, emigrated to the USA from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1950s and decided to settle in Milwaukee, where there was a Croatian community, and where Kuzmanovic's father soon landed a job at the GE Medical Systems Company. He first visited Croatia in 1970 as a six-year-old when he and his parents visited the grandparents who had remained in Croatia. As a teenager in 1981 Tomislav Kuzmanovic came to Zagreb with his father as a member of a folklore ensemble in which he played the tambouritza. In his interviews he often described the fear prevalent in Croatia after Tito's death: "At the train station, in front of parks, and even in front of the concert hall, there were armed men. There were pictures of Tito everywhere, like he was Mao Zedong. You could feel fear everywhere", related Kuzmanovic of his visit to Zagreb in the early 1980s. As a Croatian emigrant Kuzmanovic's father Boris was suspect to the former Yugoslav secret service and they took away his US passport during the visit to Zagreb and interrogated him several times, only to release him in the end, accompanying him as he boarded the flight back to the USA. Even back in high school the young Kuzmanovic developed an interest in law and his decision to continue his education in that field at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was expected. He was also, in his own words, most fascinated by the fact that there was still no freedom of speech in his Croatian homeland, something he greatly valued. After graduating in 1988 he found employment at the large legal firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, and earned the esteem of the Croatian community in America as he began helping them out with legal issue like obtaining a visa, passport and citizenship papers. The young lawyer's reputation spread as far as Michigan, where businessman Ilija Letica in April of 1990 founded the "Lawyers for Democratic Changes" group whose members were to go as observers to the first multi-party elections in Croatia. Among the observers that went that year to monitor the elections in Croatia was a colleague of Kuzmanovic's he would meet again at trials in The Hague – Luka Misetic. After the elections, won by the HDZ party, President Franjo Tudjman soon embarked upon a visit of Canada and Washington, with the young Tomislav Kuzmanovic serving as his interpreter in the tour of the American continent. In July of 1992, as a 28-year-old lawyer from Milwaukee, Kuzmanovic was a part of a delegation from the Croatian-American Association to visit Brent Scowcroft, then US President George Bush senior's national security advisor. It was the goal of the Croatian delegation to try to change the official US position on the Balkan crisis.

MIROSLAV SEPAROVIC, now the former defence counsel to Mladen Markac, and Goran MikulicicThis is how he described the event ten years later: "I was very excited about the White House meeting. Unfortunately I did not that time succeed in what I had hoped for." Nevertheless, he continued the struggle for Croatia in other ways, and lobbied earnestly to defeat Republican Congressman Jim Moody, a strong proponent of Serbian interests in US Congress. So far Kuzmanovic has for his efforts received several Croatian commendations: in 1992 he was recognised by the city of Slavonski Brod for his contribution to the defence effort, and in 1996 Tudjman decorated him with the Order of the Croatian Braid for his contribution to Croatian independence. In 1999, Kuzmanovic won another key legal case: representing the Franciscan order in Rome, which the Serbian organisation "Holocaust survivors" sued, claiming that the members of the Franciscan order had during World War II, i.e. right after the fall of the Independent Croatian State (NDH), taken gold from the National Bank in Zagreb and hidden it at the Vatican bank. Kuzmanovic's next case was in 2000 when he represented Croatia before the Federal District Court in Florida in proceedings initiated by Mirza Kahvedzic, a Muslim refugee from Odzak. Kahvedzic was seeking 200 million dollars in damages from Croatia for "persecution and genocide", but Kuzmanovic's defence convinced the Florida judges to reject the claim.

Over the past months Kuzmanovic has also gotten involved in the case of Croatian emigrant Zvonko Busic, serving a prison sentence in the US for the hijacking of an airplane 30 years ago. Besides the many cases he has worked on that are directly or indirectly related to Croatia, Kuzmanovic has specialised in several areas of litigation within the law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, and is currently working on a big case, which means he will only be able to dedicate himself to the defence of General Mladen Markac at the start of autumn, when the start of the Hague trial is scheduled for. Nacional has learned that Mladen Markac himself and his lawyer until recently Miroslav Separovic have already approved of his appointment, and the fact that Tomislav Kuzmanovic has already been an accredited defence counsel before the Hague Tribunal will contribute to a speedy appointment procedure.

Kuzmanovic had joined the defence team of Zdravko Mucic, a Croat from Bosnia & Herzegovina who was in 1993 and 1994 the commander of the camp in Celebici in central Bosnia. He succeeded in reducing his prison term of 10 years by one year, and cleared Zejnil Delalic, a Croatian from Konjic, of charges that he committed crimes against Bosnians. Kuzmanovic bought his strongest weapons to both cases: a comprehensive analysis of the evidence, building a strong case and excellent rhetorical skills, the reason he is a frequent guest of US radio and TV shows.