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Ante Gotovina From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. General Ante Gotovina in his army uniform General Ante Gotovina in his army uniform Ante Gotovina (born October 12, 1955) is a Croatian professional soldier and currently a fugitive general. Gotovina was born on the island of Pašman near Zadar. He was a member of the French Foreign Legion beginning in the early 1970s. When the war in Croatia began in 1991, he became a commander in the Croatian Army. He advanced from brigadier in 1992 to major general in 1994. He was the commanding officer of the Split military district between 1992 and 1996; including the 1995 Operation Storm. In 1996 he became the Chief of the Croatian Army Inspectorate, but was dismissed from the active service in 2000. Gotovina was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2001 for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war that the court claims troops under his command committed over the Serbs in the self-proclaimed Krajina region during and after Operation Storm (during which the Serb-occupied territories of Croatia were restored). Gotovina, however, fled and remains at large, reportedly out of reach of both Croatian authorities and the Interpol. Rumours abound as to his present whereabouts. Some suggest he is hiding out in Franciscan monasteries in Bosnia and Herzegovina, others that he is in Ireland, some say Austria. A suitcase with personal items and news clips had been found in southern Italy allegedly meant for Gotovina, but the authorities could not confirm this. Gotovina has also been linked to several organized crime groups, notably those helping one Hrvoje Petrač who is wanted for questioning on unrelated matters. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and some Scandinavian states currently oppose Croatian ambitions to join the European Union if the Croatian Government does not fully cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal. The Croatian government has declared that it does not know the current location of Gotovina and that the authorities are doing their utmost to find the General and to extradite him to the Tribunal. Accession negotiations with the EU, scheduled to start on March 17, 2005, were postponed because Gotovina was not located. President Stjepan Mesić commented that the Croatian accession to the EU cannot be delayed indefinitely because of Gotovina, because if he was one day found in Patagonia, the injustice and the irrepairable damage to Croatian reputation and economy would already have been done. Mesić did point out that if the Croatian government had any clues whether Gotovina is on Patagonia or anywhere else, that it was its duty to promptly submit it to the ICTY investigators. Amongst the Croatian population, Gotovina is seen in certain circles as a meritorious character of the war. Croatians are divided over the issue of extradition to the ICTY because of several issues: whether trying an important general casts a shadow on what is mostly perceived as a just and lawful operation Storm, and on the other hand whether it's correct to flee from a legal institution when others in similar position (such as general Rahim Ademi) have submitted themselves to the authorities. Furthermore, the extreme right in Croatia has portrayed Gotovina as a hero, not only because of his war actions, but also because he ran from a court and avoided being extradited while the left-wing coalition was in power. They consider him a leader and adore him, similar to a cult of personality. Many individuals and parties use hostility towards the ICTY to benefit their public support numbers. Many posters of Ante Gotovina have been placed on privately-owned land in Croatia, mostly by veteran unions. In the region of his origin, in and around Zadar, even the buildings owned by city government were plastered with Gotovina's pictures at one point. Some posters have been removed by the authorities, while some were subject to vandalism. The newspapers in Croatia have also investigated into Gotovina's whereabouts, and the editor of Nacional Ivo Pukanić claims to have met him on an undisclosed location in the EU, and that weekly published an interview in 2003 from that occasion. In 2003, the weekly Feral Tribune ran a story about Gotovina quoting several French court records saying that Gotovina was convicted of a 1981 robbery and that he served five years in prison between 1986 and 1991. In February 2005 the Croatian daily Jutarnji list published facsimiles of those documents. There is some discussion whether, as a former member of the French Foreign Legion, Gotovina was during this time in the employ of François Mitterrand's extra-legal secret service. Another document stated that in 1993 he was convicted to two years in prison due to participation in an unlawful arrest, kidnapping and extortion, and another yet said that he was sentenced to 30 months for extortion in 1995. Gotovina's attorneys denied these allegations saying that the documents are falsified because he was given a French passport in 1995 and had it renewed in 2001, something the French authorities would never have done had he actually been a convicted criminal on the run.