Croatian pleads not guilty to war crimes against Serbs
One by one, Gotovina replied, "your honour, not guilty," to the list of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the killing of 150 Serbs during fighting to retake the Krajina, or eastern frontier region of Croatia seized by rebel Serbs at the start of the 1991-1995 war.
Gotovina, aged 50, listened intently as Judge Carmel Agius read him his rights and showed occasional impatience as the court clerk read the lengthy indictment that took more than an hour.
Gotovina was accused of giving his troops unrestrained freedom to plunder when they retook the Krajina, which Croatia's Serbian minority had proclaimed as an independent state.
Gotovina was third on the tribunal's most wanted list, preceded only by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top commander Ratko Mladic. Both are accused of genocide.
The indictment charged that Gotovina conspired with the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to conduct "the forcible and permanent removal of the Serb population" from Krajina. Gotovina was the senior Croatian operational commander during the August 1995 campaign.
His troops avenged a humiliating loss and regained a vital strip of territory for Croatia. But for three months they rampaged through village after village, setting thousands of buildings alight, pillaging houses and killing residents. Tens of thousands were evicted.
Prosecutors said Gotovina knew what was likely to happen, failed to take steps to prevent atrocities or stop them once they began, and took no action against those who committed the crimes.
Agius read a list of 31 of the 150 Serbs allegedly killed by the Croatian troops, men and women ranging in age from 45 to 90. Most were shot, but one had his throat slit, another was burned and another was beaten to death.
Tens of thousands of Croatians rallied in Gotovina's support in Croatian cities yesterday.
His capture last Wednesday by Spanish police in the Canary Islands was a success for the tribunal and for the Western diplomats who pressured Croatia to co-operate by rejecting Zagreb's request for talks on joining the European Union.
It also squeezed the Serbian government to step up the manhunt for Karadzic, Mladic and four other Serbs. The six fugitives are the last suspects sought by the UN court, which has charged 161 people since it was created in 1993 to prosecute individuals committing atrocities during Yugoslavia's disintegration.
Meanwhile, a Serbian court in a landmark verdict found 14 former members of a Serb militia guilty of war crimes and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from five to 20 years for the execution of 200 Croat prisoners of war in 1991.
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