Posted on 12/08/2005 9:33:00 AM PST by Alter Kaker
A Croatian general charged with war crimes has been held in Spain, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor has said.
Ante Gotovina - the third most-wanted suspect from the 1990s Balkan wars - was arrested on Wednesday night in the Canary Islands, said Carla Del Ponte.
Gen Gotovina, 50, is accused over the death of about 150 Serb civilians during a Croatian offensive in 1995.
The Croatian government's failure to arrest him had hampered the country's entry talks with the European Union.
Ms Del Ponte said she hoped efforts would now be stepped up to arrest the top two men on the tribunal's most-wanted list.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic remain at large.
Stabbed, shot, burned
Ms Del Ponte announced Gen Gotovina's arrest during a visit in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
She said the retired general was due to be transferred to The Hague.
He was held in a hotel in the Tenerife resort of Playa de las Americas after being followed for several days, the Spanish news agency Efe reported.
The retired general was said to be in possession of a false Croatian passport with an assumed name, said Efe quoting the Spanish interior ministry.
He was indicted for crimes against humanity by the war crimes tribunal in 2001.
He is alleged to have failed to prevent the murder of 150 Serbs killed by shooting, stabbing or burning during Operation Storm, the August 1995 push against Serb forces in Croatia's Krajina region.
The indictment also accuses him of co-ordinating a campaign of plunder and looting throughout operations in ethnically Serb areas of the region.
'Good news'
Throughout the tribunal's efforts to track him down, Gen Gotovina, has maintained support from a wide section of the Croatian public, some of whom regard him as a national hero.
Until recently, posters with his picture captioned "hero, not criminal" had been sighted around Croatia.
He was sent into early retirement in 2000 when Croatia promised to investigate allegations of war crimes among its military during the 1990s.
Croatia had claimed that he subsequently fled the country. He vowed never to turn himself in.
Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said he had been notified of Gen Gotovina's capture by Ms Del Ponte on Thursday morning.
"I would like to say that those who believed us when we said that Gotovina was not in Croatia have today received the final and complete confirmation," he said.
In Brussels, Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer described the arrest of Gen Gotovina as "good news for the world, for bringing people to justice who are not yet convicted but are accused of very serious crimes".
Serbian President Boris Tadic congratulated Croatia on Gotovina's arrest.
"We have to solve the problems of Ratko Mladic and the others," he said. "But we have to do that in all the countries in the region."
But Belgrade reiterated that it had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the two Serb fugitives.
Not.
Franko looks like small child comparing to Gotovina`s indictment.
Bump
Dio is Ante Gotovino, hence the silence...:)
Heh!
General Gotovina knows the Canary Islands well...he spent time there in the past to learn Spanish while serving in the French Foreign Legion.
I thought he would have had a better security detail than that, how was he caught?
National hero, international villain
By Adam LeBor
CELEBRATED as a national hero by his fellow Croats, General Ante Gotovina was indicted in May 2001 for his role in the bloody suppression of Serb rebels.
As his troops rampaged through newly captured villages in the Krajina region of Croatia in August 1995, at least 150 Serbs were killed and several hundred disappeared. The victims were beaten, tortured, shot and burnt to death as villages were razed and livestock slaughtered, according to General Gotovina’s indictment by the UN war crimes tribunal.
Although the atrocities carried out under his command during Operation Storm ultimately led to his arrest, his admirers note that the eviction of Serb rebels from a quarter of Croatian territory marked a turning point in the wars of the former Yugoslavia.
General Gotovina’s rise through the ranks of the Croatian Army was as rapid as the advance of his troops through the self-declared Republic of Serb Krajina. He returned to Croatia only at the outbreak of war in 1991 after 20 years abroad, much of it spent in the French Foreign Legion.
He had left communist Yugoslavia at the age of 16 and worked on a merchant ship before signing up with the legion. He served until 1979, when he was granted French citizenship and went on to train paramilitaries in Argentina and Guatemala.
He then turned to crime. In 1991 he had just been released from prison after serving five years for stealing two million francs (£205,500) from a French businessman.
Operation Storm began at dawn on August, 4, 1995, as 200,000 Croatian troops advanced towards Knin, the capital of the self-declared republic of Serb Krajina. By the following morning, the Croatian flag was flying over Knin castle and up to 200,000 Serbs were fleeing.
Croats argue that Operation Storm was a liberation of their occupied homeland. Tribunal officials say that the campaign is not on trial, only the war crimes committed under its cover. General Gotovina went into hiding immediately after his indictment.
This year Western officials accused Croatian authorities of sabotaging their efforts to track him down. Diplomats believed that powerful networks within the Croatian army and intelligence services were aiding the fugitive commander.
Gotovina's indictment accuses him of allowing 150 people to do. Franco's Civil War killed 1 million. Or were you referring to Franjo Tudjman?
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