Croatian general pleads not guilty to war crimes

Croatian war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina pleaded not guilty today to seven counts of murder, persecution and expulsion of Serbs during the critical final months of the Croatian war in 1995.

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 o retake the Krajina region.

Gotovina, 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 villages when they retook the Serb minority region of Krajina of Croatia, which had fallen to Serb forces in 1991.

Gotovina was third on the tribunal’s most wanted list, preceded only by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top commander Ratko Mladic, who 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 to retake Krajina.

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, his indictment said. At least 150 Serbs were murdered and tens of thousands were evicted from their homes.

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 at a restaurant in the Canary Islands was a major success for the tribunal and for the Western diplomats who pressured Croatia to co-operate by rejecting Zagreb’s request to begin 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.

Today, Nato troops in Bosnia searched the home in Pale of Dragan Stajcic, the former editor of the St. John radio station who is suspected of belonging to a network helping Karadzic evade arrest.

“The search was conducted in an effort to find additional information about the support network and to collect information on Karadzic’s location,” said a Nato statement in Bosnia.

Gotovina was extradited to The Hague on Saturday and spent the weekend at the UN detention centre, a wing of a Dutch prison in the suburb of Scheveningen.

After his arrest, Gotovina’s former war comrades renewed their public and legal battles to clear his name.

“We are gathered here as one. We need to help Gotovina to prove his innocence and remove the stain put on Croatia’s fight for independence,” General Ante Kotromanovic said yesterday at a rally in Split.

Demonstrators dressed in black, waving national flags and portraits of Gotovina. “A hero, not a war criminal,” was the message on several posters.

In a separate trial, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic asked the tribunal for time off from prison to visit heart doctors in Moscow during the UN court’s winter recess. Milosevic has been incarcerated in The Hague since June 2001.

Presiding Judge Patrick Robinson appeared momentarily stunned by the request. “This is an application for provisional release,” he said.

“I can’t believe you’re even making it.”

He said the request could not be considered unless Milosevic submitted a written application with guarantees that he would return for trial.