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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 2017)
Page 8A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Thursday, November 30, 2017 General drinks poison at war crimes trial, dies ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Slobodan Praljak, a former film and theater director turned wartime general, was always known for theatrics. So, when the former Bosnian Croat military commander suddenly threw back his head and drank what he said was poison from a small bottle after his 20-year war crimes sentence was upheld by a U.N. court on Wednesday, many Croats watching the drama unfold on live TV thought it was yet another bluff. But it wasn’t. The 72-year-old silver-bearded Praljak died soon after being rushed from the U.N. tribunal to a nearby hospital. The shocking scene was not unlike the suspenseful plays he once directed before becoming a military commander during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. “Judges, Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal! I reject, with contempt, your verdict,” Praljak shouted before drinking from the bottle. Then, his voice rising ICTY via AP In this photo provided by the ICTY on Wednesday, Slobodan Praljak brings a bottle to his lips, during a Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Praljak yelled, “I am not a war criminal!” and appeared to drink from a small bottle, seconds after judges reconfirmed his 20-year prison sentence for involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat ministate in Bosnia in the early 1990s. theatrically, he declared: “That is poison that I drank.” The dramatic scene shocked Croatia, diverting attention from the convic- tions of Praljak and five other Bosnian Croat wartime mili- tary and political leaders for their part in a plot to violently carve out a Croat-dominated mini-state in Bosnia by killing and deporting Muslims. Wednesday’s ruling, which upheld a key finding that the late Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman was directly involved in the plot, could have major financial and political implications for Croatia, potentially trig- gering massive war damage claims and shaking the Bosniak-Croat mini-state within Bosnia that the two ethnic groups share. A founder of Tudjman’s Croatian Democratic Union party, Praljak was one of six Bosnian Croat political and military leaders who with significant support from neighboring Croatia turned against the Bosnian army during the 1992-95 war, trying to carve out an ethnically pure Croat region by force, just as Bosnian Serbs had done in other areas of Bosnia with help from Serbia. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic decried Wednesday’s verdicts, calling Praljak’s apparent suicide “his message” to Croatia to resist the consequences of the “unjust” ruling by the Inter- national Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Ironically, Praljak, who had already been jailed for 13 years before his 20-year sentence was upheld, could have soon walked free because convicts are generally released after serving two-thirds of their sentences. Before the war, Praljak directed productions in theaters across Bosnia, notably in the southern city of Mostar, where he was accused of ordering the destruction of the city’s Old Bridge, one of the most striking Ottoman monuments in the Balkans and a jewel of Bosnia’s Islamic heritage. “Mr.Praljak could have been a good director who would have made films about Mostar instead of destroying it,” said Bosnian Muslim leader Bakir Izetbegovic, whose father Alija led the Muslims during the war. Bosnian Croats on Wednesday lit candles in memory of Praljak in Mostar, where they held a church Mass. Croatian analyst Zarko Puhovski predicted that Praljak could now be “depicted as a saint.” OHA: Responsiveness improved after a new director, Patrick Allen, took the helm Continued from 1A Staff photo by E.J. Harris New members of the CTUIR Board of Trustees listen to the oath of office as read by Judge William Johnson during a swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday at the Nixyaawii Governance Center in Mission. CTUIR: Runoff election for vice chair will be Feb. 12 Continued from 1A previous jobs and will take the same approach as the General Council chairman. Represented by four officers, the General Council is comprised of every adult member of the tribes. The council makes recommenda- tions to the Board of Trustees. In a four-way race, Sigo defeated incumbent Alan Crawford by 21 votes to take the seat. In a fiery outgoing speech, Crawford listed some of the projects that are now ongoing, like the Wildhorse Resort & Casino expansion, the new Yellow- hawk Tribal Health Center facility, and the new building for Nixyaawii Community School. “It’s going to happen,” he said. “No more campaign promises.” Michael Ray Johnson and Shawna Gavin joined Sigo as new officers of the General Council. There weren’t as many new faces sworn in to the Board of Trustees. Former board treasurer Rosenda Shippentower declined to run for re-elec- tion and instead ran for and won one of four at-large Staff photo by E.J. Harris Members of the CTUIR junior youth council are sworn in Wednesday during a ceremony at the Nixyaawii Governance Center in Mission. seats. Board newcomer Doris Wheeler won the open race for treasurer. Incumbents Aaron Ashley and Woodrow Star were joined by Shippentower and newcomer Sally Kosey to fill out the four seats, meaning longtime board member Armand Minthorn was voted out of office. Although Minthorn wasn’t in attendance, Burke praised him for his work in convincing the federal government to re-bury the “Ancient One,” the bones of a prehistoric man that DNA tests determined to be related to Columbia Basin tribes. Jeremy Wolf, the incum- bent vice chair of the board, was in attendance but was not sworn in for another term. After the votes were tallied for the Nov. 14 election, Wolf and challenger Shana Radford were deadlocked at 370 votes apiece. CTUIR spokesman Chuck Sams said Wolf will retain his seat until a winner is declared in a Feb. 12 runoff election. The audit also found that the agency doesn’t have “well-defined, consis- tent and agency-wide processes” to detect improper payments, espe- cially in the state’s system of coordinated care. Additionally, auditors found that gaps in detecting and preventing improper payments may also make it more challenging for the payments to get recovered. Most recipients of Medicaid in Oregon are enrolled in what’s called a coordinated care orga- nization, or CCO. A CCO is essentially a regional network of care providers who see Medicaid patients. The state pays the CCO on a per-patient basis every month. In late October, news emerged of $74 million in possible overpayments to the CCOs between 2014 and 2016. OHA has already recouped $10.1 million of that. The errors are likely due to mis-classification of certain patients who were also eligible for Medicare, and it’s not clear how much of the money the state must repay the federal govern- ment. In a statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, a Republican, said that the $74 million possible overpayment was unre- lated to issues identified in Wednesday’s audit. Further, that issue was not reported to auditors, but made public when The Oregonian requested rele- vant public records. The week before Thanksgiving, the agency identified a litany of addi- tional problems, ranging from mis-allocation of funds to possible overpay- ment, that could total about $112.4 million more. OHA has been under the microscope since May, as it worked through a backlog of about 115,000 patients whose qualifications for Medicaid were unclear. The agency found that over half — about 67,600 — still qualified and they were kept on the program. While 24,100 were found ineligible, the rest didn’t respond to the state’s inqui- ries, and were cut, although the agency expects that some of that group will be retroactively re-enrolled. Auditors contended Wednesday that the health agency’s delay in fixing that problem caused the agency to spend $88 million that could have been avoided. OHA says that the costs were not avoidable, though, in part because it is not possible for the agency to tell whether someone who received Medicaid and was found ineligible on a certain date would have been ineligible on some prior date. The federal government also requires the agency to keep people on Medicaid until they have gone through a process that officially determines that they no longer qualify for the program. While auditors acknowl- edged that requirement, they also said that “regard- less, expenses resulted because these clients remained on the caseload past the point when OHA reported they should have gone through an annual eligibility determination.” Auditors also noted that the agency initially with- held information. “Our audit work was limited by prior agency management,” auditors wrote. “At times, we were prevented direct access to staff, had our interviews with staff monitored, had our information requests delayed, and were occa- sionally provided with complete and/or inaccurate information.” They noted that respon- siveness improved after a new director, Patrick Allen, took the helm Sept. 1. Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, named Allen to the post in the wake of a publicity scandal under the previous director, Lynne Saxton. Several other top leader- ship positions at the agency were also vacated. AIR: ‘Smaller facilities would likely not be impacted because of low risk and low emissions’ Continued from 1A Nov. 20 in Corvallis, with future dates scheduled in Portland, Eugene, Salem and The Dalles. Debbie Radie, vice president of operations at Boardman Foods and chairwoman of the Northwest Food Processors Association Board of Directors, was the only person to testify Tuesday, saying the proposed rules are “poorly designed and unworkable.” Cleaner Air Oregon was estab- lished last year in response to toxic air emissions in 2016 Bullseye Glass in southeast Portland. Yet rather than address sources of emissions that DEQ knows to be an issue, Radie said the agency is targeting compa- nies like hers that are already subject to regulation. “There is no plan in this rule to identify sources of emissions that are not currently permitted,” Radie said. “The only way this rule will reduce emissions is to force companies to curtail or stop production. The level of uncertainty does not create an environment where businesses and communities thrive.” The draft rules, released Oct. 20, would require companies to report their use of 600 chemicals, including heavy metals and other air pollut- ants. Facilities would then need to calculate potential health risks to nearby communities, considering what if any health problems may be caused by short- and long-term exposure. From there, DEQ may require additional steps — such as a risk reduction plan or conditional permit — to mitigate the risk. Keith Johnson, who serves as special assistant to the director of Cleaner Air Oregon, said the goal is to use health-based standards for reducing harmful air toxics. “A facility that’s in a remote loca- tion would be much less risky than a similar one located in the middle of a city or town,” Johnson explained. “Smaller facilities would likely not be impacted because of low risk and low emissions.” Out of 2,500 businesses with DEQ air quality permits, Johnson said only the 80 highest-risk facilities would be regulated by the program in the first five years. But in her testimony, Radie said the rule would not be based on verified science and data, but rather by asking already permitted facilities to submit data that would be entered into a “very crude, inaccurate and misleading formula to determine theoretical risk.” Cleaner Air Oregon also factors the cumulative effects of industrial emissions in a given area, which Radie said may cause some compa- nies with minimal emissions to be dragged into a full-blown risk assessment process just by being near an industrial location. Boardman Foods, an onion processing plant, is located at the Port of Morrow’s East Beach Industrial Park near Boardman, which includes other value-added processors such as Lamb Weston and Tillamook Cheese. Smith said the added cost of complying with the program might not force food processors to close their doors, but could make them less competitive moving forward. “That’s a huge deal,” he said. “Right now, there is a lot of investment being made both by the processors and our suppliers.” The Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a fee structure for Cleaner Air Oregon in the coming session, and the Environ- mental Quality Commission may decide to adopt all or part of the rule as early as July 2018. ——— Contact George Plaven at gplaven@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0825.