Croatian general jailed for war crimes

Fury in Croatia as national hero Ante Gotovina is one of those convicted at The Hague for state-sponsored ethnic cleansing Two Croatian commanders of the 1990s war against the Serbs have been found guilty of war crimes for overseeing a policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at expelling tens of thousands of minority Serbs from newly independent Croatia. Judges in The Hague found Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac guilty on eight of nine counts for commanding operations that entailed the shelling of civilians, the torching of Serbian homes in south-west Croatia, the murder of hundreds of elderly Serbs and the forced exodus of at least 20,000 from the Serbian minority rooted in the Dalmatian hinterland for centuries. A third accused, Ivan Cermak, was acquitted. It is the most damning verdict on Croatia’s conduct of the 1991-95 war against the Serbs in 17 years of investigations by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Gotovina was given a 24-year jail sentence. He commanded the August 1995 operations that ended a four-year Serbian insurgency and partition of Croatia and effectively won the war for Zagreb. Markac, who commanded police paramilitaries in the same Operation Storm, was jailed for 18 years. The verdicts were met with outrage in the cities of Croatia, where thousands of former fighters rallied in central Zagreb and in cities on the Adriatic coast to watch giant screens transmitting from The Hague. The judges in effect incriminated the state of Croatia for a policy of systematic ethnic cleansing against its Serbian minority. The verdict will create major problems for the prime minister, Jadranka Kosor. His administration is squeezed between a nationalist backlash supported by a recalcitrant and powerful Catholic church, and pressure from Brussels to be more proactive on war crimes and the treatment of minority Serbs as Croatia seeks to conclude its negotiations to join the European Union. In the most telling findings from the panel of judges, the tribunal found that the Croatian state under President Franjo Tudjman, a hardline nationalist, had prosecuted a policy of terror, persecution and violence calculated to rid the country of its Serb minority. Almost 200,000 Serbs fled Croatia in the summer and autumn of 1995. “Croatian military forces and the special police committed acts of murder, cruel treatment, inhumane acts, destruction, plunder, persecution and deportation. There was a widespread and systematic attack directed against this Serb civilian population,” the judges found. “The fear of violence and duress caused by the shelling created an environment in which those present there had no choice but to leave.” While focused on Gotovina and two fellow accused, the three-year trial loomed larger because it has been the main opportunity for examining the strategy and conduct of the leadership of Croatia during the war. The decisive political leaders such as Tudjman, the defence minister Gojko Susak and the army chief Janko Bobetko all died before having to face trial. The Gotovina case has served as a proxy trial. A former French legionnaire who returned to Croatia when the war erupted in 1991, Gotovina commanded the central operations that won the war for Croatia in August 1995, retaking the strategic town of Knin in the Dalmatian hinterland that was the seat of the four-year-old Serbian rebellion that left Croatia crippled. He was indicted for war crimes in 2001. Tipped off by contacts in the Croatian government, he went on the run for four years until he was arrested in a Tenerife hotel at the end of 2005. For years the Croatian government blocked attempts to locate him until it performed a U-turn to unlock its EU negotiations. Gotovina, along with Markac and Cermak, the Knin garrison commander, faced nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for overseeing the alleged deportation of tens of thousands of Serbs through murder, the torching of homes and shelling of civilians. For many Croats, especially on the right, Gotovina is a national hero. Catholic bishops this week denounced the tribunal, accusing it of deliberately confusing victim and aggressor. The prime minister described the August 2005 operations as part of “a just and liberating war”. Operation Storm, which climaxed with the reconquest of Knin and the Serbian exodus, was prosecuted at lightning speed and highly successfully with strong American backing. It represented the denouement to the four-year war. A fortnight earlier at Srebrenica in Bosnia the Serbs had committed the worst massacre of the Yugoslav wars, murdering almost 8,000 Muslim males. Following the Croatian rout of the Serbian rebels the war was over and Croatia’s independence secured. Bosnia’s fragile peace pact was struck three months later. In the wake of the victory Croatian forces went on the rampage, torching the homes of elderly Serbs who did not flee and murdering hundreds. War crimes International criminal court Croatia Serbia Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.