Marin IvanovićI would like to apologize to Nacional readers and the Croatian public due to the misinformation I wrote and published concerning the kidnapping of general Ante Gotovina’s son while the general was still on the run. At the time I published the article, I was convinced that my informers were telling the truth. Not at all suspicious of their honour and good intentions, I loyally passed the entire event onto the readers, exactly as described to me. Unfortunately, my informer, in whom I had full trust, knowingly lied to me. Several months ago, I began to suspect that he had lied. I received definite proof last week that I had been deceived and played, when this man confessed this directly to me in front of witnesses. The name of the man who told this unscrupulous lie is Marin Ivanovic, one of the head attorneys on Ante Gotovina’s defence team.

However, this is not the only lie that Ivanovic has told, and after all that’s happened, the question that needs to be posed is who he lied to, when and on whose behalf, damaging his client most of all. As lying and disinformation is against Nacional’s journalism ethics, at the very moment we received concrete evidence that we had been manipulated and deceived the public unknowingly, we decided to inform the public that this was not the truth, regardless of the consequences. We believe that even the worst true is better than the sweetest lie and the sooner this is told to the public, the better for all of us.

I had complete faith in Marin Ivanovic, as General Gotovina told me to have faith in him during our meeting in 2003 when I expressed my scepticism over the capabilities and intentions of his defence team. At that time, the fugitive general asked me to sit and talk with Ivanovic and the others and to discuss the options available to quickly and easily resolve his problem. After Gotovina told me he was prepared to come to Croatia to speak with the ICTY investigators and, if necessary, to go to the Hague on his own, I faithfully passed this on in the interview. In the original interview, Gotovina did not demand the lawsuit be withdrawn. After the authorization of the interview, where Ivanovic had the last word, the possibility of coming to Croatia without withdrawal of the indictment was thrown out.

One fact concerning the interview is very important and needs to be mention, as this later proved to be key—attorney Marin Ivanovic had no idea of the preparations for my meeting with Gotovina. Had he known, this meeting likely would never have happened, for I disturbed all his plans, and all the plans of those who stand behind him. Firstly, Nacional and I personally got involved in the story as a foreign body, and I informed both the president and premier of Gotovina’s plans to return to Croatia and participate with the Hague Tribunal. In this way, I prevented any further manipulation of the fugitive general, for at that time, I had directly spoken with him by telephone, which I openly and naively admitted to on television.

After this, I was immediately invited in for questioning and the investigation was shifted to me, and this was also the end of my direct communication with Gotovina. After this, Marin Ivanovic, who did directly contact Gotovina, was able to “sell” me any stories he wanted. I cannot confirm what Ivanovic told Gotovina and whether he deceived him; this is something Gotovina will have to work out with his lawyer.

From the very first moment, my intention was to try to help resolve this situation as quickly as possible, to bring Gotovina back to Croatia and start direct talks with the ICTY to resolve the problem. This was what Nacional and I advocated, as we felt this was best for Gotovina, his family, the state and the ICTY. However, this whole time, someone was causing disturbance through the media and domestic and foreign services and stirred up distrust and destructiveness.

I didn’t realize that certain media and the ICTY itself had claimed that Gotovina was hiding in Croatia or on the border with B-H, as I knew with 100% certainty that he had been abroad from day one. Which later, upon his arrest and the finding of his phony passport under the name Kristijan Horvat, proved to be true. Therefore, someone was placing the story that it was I that was lying and the Gotovina was in fact in the region. It wasn’t clear to me whose interests this was in. However, a meeting in my office a month and a half before Gotovina’s arrest helped me put this piece of the puzzle into place.

In the height of the paranoia surrounding Gotovina’s arrest and who was protecting him, Ivanovic came to my office and in “confidence”, literally whispering in my ear, told me how a group of criminals from Belgrade had come to Zagreb with the intent of Gotovina’s son. He proved his story with a thousand details: from names, the type of car they drove to the machine guns allegedly used to hold up Gotovina’s friends! I immediately felt that this was information that the Croatian public should know about.

Before publishing the story, I wanted to meet with Ivanovic again, to confirm some of the details. He came to my home and once again, in the finest detail, told the entire story again, this time with even more details. Not for a moment did I suspect that this man could be lying to me, as this was too serious a matter and General Gotovina himself had guaranteed that he could be trusted. Considering my faith in Gotovina, there was not a single reason to not believe Ivanovic, as one of the people Gotovina trusts the most.

My first suspicions in the story of the kidnapping arose when by chance, I met one of Gotovina’s friends that Ivanovic had said was involved in the kidnapping attempt. I had not known this man before. We were at the Khala bar in Zagreb and, as he was parked quite a ways away, he asked me to drive him to his car. During the drive, he asked me where the kidnapping story had come from. I looked at him puzzled, thinking he was pulling my leg. When I saw that he was serious, I asked him, “Why do you ask, since you yourself were involved?” He responded that he had heard threats and information that something like this had been planned, but, to the extent of his knowledge, nothing ever happened. However, he said that perhaps he did not know of all the events, so he decided to ask me about the kidnapping. At that time, it occurred to me that I may have fallen for an intelligence trick. I couldn’t rationally explain why one of Gotovina’s main attorneys would lie to me and stimulate me to deceive the public. With such a stupid move, his client was most damaged in the long term.

The second case occurred about forty days before Gotovina’s arrest. I very openly told Marin Ivanovic, and later Luka Misetic by telephone, that State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic had offered, obviously with approval from the Hague, to resolve the Gotovina case quietly. The offer was made for Gotovina to turn himself in, with the silent guarantee that he would be released from detention after two months. Mladen Bajic offered that he personally would speak with Gotovina, without knowing where or from what telephone, and to pass on the offer, thereby giving his guarantee. I passed this on to Ivanovic, however, after a few days, the answer was that the general did not want to speak to Bajic as this would be too risky for both men. I passed on the answer to Bajic, who continued to try to find a way out and a peaceful solution to prevent an arrest.

Ten days later, I learned that the secret service had recorded a telephone call between Gotovina and his wife, and that they had precisely located him. Before publishing this, I called Ivanovic and told him what I knew. On that occasion, he again told me in the strictest confidence that Gotovina was no longer at that location in Spain and that he had been transferred by ship to Croatia. I listened in disbelief how Ivanovic told me that a war wound on Gotovina’s back had reopened and become infected and that he urgently needed an operation. According to Ivanovic, Gotovina’s life depended on an operation which could not be conducted abroad. “Our guys operated on him,” he whispered to me.

Not at all suspecting the truth of that said, I began to think about the worst possible scenarios. Only later, when I definitely realized that Ivanovic had lied about the kidnapping, I began to suspect the story of an “operation in Croatia”. At first, I had no idea what he wanted to accomplish with this story. Later I realized that Ivanovic, judging by his morality and sick spy’s mind, was certain that I would run to Bajic or Karamarko or someone else and say that Gotovina was in Croatia. As such, Ivanovic thought that this would shift the search from Spain to Croatia.

To his dismay, I didn’t tell anyone what he had told me about “Gotovina’s operation”. After realizing the game he was playing, I wondered who was systematically deceiving the Croatian public, EU and the ICTY that Gotovina had spent all this time in Croatia. Judging by what he tried to accomplish with me, this could easily have been Ivanovic and those who stand behind him. In forcing the story through the media that Gotovina is in Croatia, they shifted the focus off his actual itinerary abroad. My public claims that Gotovina was abroad was actually working against Ivanovic’s concept of protecting his client. Had I not convinced myself of where Gotovina was all this time, I might have believed the information that came from various sources around Gotovina, such as Ivanovic.

When I finally put all the pieces of Ivanovic’s puzzle together, I took advantage of the opportunity at Zadar night when I met Dunja Gotovina for the first time. I asked her to tell her husband everything and ask him to order Ivanovic to come to my office with two witnesses. Several months passed and this happened last week, when Ivanovic was forced to come to my office with Luka Misetic and Marijan Pedisic. I only wanted to speak with him in the presence of witnesses. Faced with the facts, he admitted lying to me.

His cold-blooded confession was worrying – for if he lied to me, then who else did he lie to? Did they not in fact orchestrate all the paranoia in Croatia? At the end of the conversation, Luka Misetic, as head of the Gotovina defence team, apologized to me and said that they had not participated in this deceit and that he was very sorry this had happened to me, when my only intention was to resolve this situation.

After this, I wondered constantly why Ivanovic had done this, who had convinced him to do so, whether this former SIS agent had worked alone, convinced he had a mission and was working for the good of his client. This sick concept of deceit and manipulation of the public, agencies and police, all aimed at “protecting” his client, could have arisen only in the mind of a spy who cannot think further than how to deceive. I caught him in two lies, and wonder how many others he told.

Finally, he most harmed his client and his family and his colleagues in the defence team. What Gotovina and Misetic will do about it is up to them. My obligation is to tell the truth to Nacional readers. For me, this is a very bitter truth, but I did not have the right to keep quiet. Forgive me for writing a mistruth and for believing a man who did not deserve my trust.