Manolić claims: Tuđman "did business" with Arkan

Former high-ranking SFRY intelligence officer and Tuđman's minister and associate Josip Manolić claims that Željko Ražnatović Arkan procured weapons for Croatia and sold a video recording of the Ovčara murders to the Croatian leadership, reports the Patria News Agency.

In his recently published memoirs "Politics and Homeland," which have attracted significant public attention, Manolić claims there is evidence that Arkan paid for his freedom and release from prison in Croatia with trucks of weapons.

During the investigation and his stay in Remetinec, Arkan became a supplier of weapons for the needs of the Republic of Croatia. In early 1991, specifically in April, Croatia purchased a large quantity of weapons from his company from the military depot in Batajnica.

These were predominantly Kalashnikov "AK 47" rifles and anti-tank weapons – twelve trucks in total, Manolić states.

Presenting claims that change the perception of events in Croatia during the conflicts of the 1990s, Manolić states that some Osijek "lords of life and death" participated in these operations with Arkan.

Details about all of this are known to some surviving residents of Vukovar, sheltered on the island of Krk, as well as those who escorted the trucks to the unloading point – states the former Yugoslav and Tuđman high-ranking official.

"The weapons were paid for, and some individuals in the Osijek County Court building prepared two briefcases full of gold and silver... There is a record of the entire case in the State Attorney's Office," Manolić states.

He claims that in February 1992, Franjo Tuđman paid two million German marks for the procurement of a video recording owned by Željko Ražnatović Arkan – as stated in documents that the Croatian state still possesses today.

"The cash was taken to Arkan, and the video cassette, wrapped in aluminum foil, was handed over to Tuđman at his family home in Nazor Street," Manolić writes, specifying that it concerned the murders at Ovčara. He claims that documents exist regarding this video recording and that he hopes they have not been destroyed in the meantime.

Manolić's book, according to Croatian media, sheds a different light on many events in Croatia in the 1990s on the political, economic, and military levels. Manolić thus states that Tuđman feared a group of powerful politicians who wanted to create a new Ustasha state.

Manolić quotes Tuđman's speech at a session of the HDZ Presidency from the early 1990s, in which he names Vladimir Šeks (identifying him as the inspirer), Ante Kutle, Vera Stanić, Ivan Bobetko, Žarko Domljan, Milan Kovač, Vico Vukojević as Ustasha extremists.

Tuđman also included Đuro Perica and Zvonimir Marković in the "Ustasha group." This group, according to Manolić, was connected with individuals in the field and was intensively working in the field to form special units, outside of the police and the guard.

These groups and units publicly propagated the Ustasha Pavelić policy and the creation of a new NDH. The city assembly of Zagreb, with its then-mayor, former actor Boris Buzančić, provided particular assistance in this.