Top Croatian war crimes fugitive arrested in Spain

Croatia’s top war crimes fugitive has been jailed in Madrid following his capture at a luxury resort on the Canary Islands after four years on the run, officials said.

Ante Gotovina, 50, was arrested without incident while dining at a hotel restaurant on the island of Tenerife on Wednesday night, Spain’s Interior Ministry said.

He was flown to Madrid yesterday and ordered held overnight in a high-security prison north of Madrid, the Efe news agency said. He was expected to be turned over the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday, reports said.

The arrest shows that Croatia is acting to deal with “the injustices of its recent past”, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said later.

Rice said Croatia largely has redeemed itself with the capture of Gotovina. Only recently has Croatia been allowed to petition for membership in the European Union. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said yesterday that the capture advances its application to join NATO.

Gotovina, a retired Croatian army general, was indicted by the tribunal in connection with the killings of at least 150 Serbs by troops under his command and for the expulsion of about 150,000 others during Croatia’s 1991-95 war.

Croatia’s failure to track down Gotovina – on the run since his 2001 indictment – had been a key obstacle to his country’s bid to start membership talks with the European Union. Croatia insisted it was not sheltering Gotovina, and the EU decided in October to move ahead with membership talks.

On Wednesday night, elite Spanish police seized Gotovina as he dined at the Hotel Bitacora in the Playa de las Americas resort, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. He had travelled to the island in the Atlantic off the African coast on a fake Croatian passport under the name Kristian Horvat, the ministry said.

Gotovina was taken to Madrid’s high court late yesterday, accompanied by a lawyer and a Croatian consular official.

Judge Felix Degayon ordered Gotovina held overnight before he is turned over to the UN tribunal in the Netherlands, Efe said. Gotovina was taken straight to Soto el Real prison, the report said.

“The arrest of Ante Gotovina is very good news,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said from Brussels, Belgium. “For reconciliation in the region … it is fundamentally important that all indictees are brought to justice.”

His capture also put pressure on Serbia to come up with two other top fugitives from the Balkans wars: wartime Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

“I’m now expecting Mladic and Karadzic,” UN chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said in Belgrade after announcing Gotovina’s arrest.

Mladic and Karadzic are believed to be hiding in Serbia or in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia.

The two men were charged by the tribunal with orchestrating the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men from Srebrenica – Europe’s worst carnage since World War II – and for laying a three-year siege to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.