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War crimes convictions of two Croat generals overturned War crimes convictions of two Croatian generals overturned
(about 3 hours later)
Appeal judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal have overturned the convictions of two Croat generals for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Serb civilians in a 1995 military blitz. An appeal court at The Hague war crimes tribunal has overturned the convictions of two Croatian generals for the expulsion of ethnic Serbs in 1995, in a ruling hailed in Croatia as a vindication of its war of independence.
Ante Gotovina, who was a commander in the Split district of the Croatian army, had been sentenced to 24 years in prison, and Mladen Markac, a Croatian police commander, to 18 years. The appeal court ordered the immediate release of Ante Gotovina, a former military commander, and Mladen Markac, a former police chief, who had been serving jail sentences of 24 and 18 years respectively. And it issued a stinging rebuttal of last year's conviction by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in one of the most comprehensive reversals of the tribunal's 19-year history.
Their supporters in the court's packed public gallery cheered and clapped as the presiding judge, Theodor Meron, ordered both men to be freed immediately. The two generals remained impassive as the verdicts were read out but the decision was greeted with cheers and applause in the public seats in the chamber and with celebrations around Croatia, where Gotovina is seen as a national hero and an embodiment of the country's fight for independence. Thousands of people took to the streets and children were sent home from schools.
Gotovina and Markac were sentenced in 2011 for crimes including murder and deportation. Judges ruled both men were part of a criminal conspiracy led by the former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman to expel Serbs. But appeal judges said no such conspiracy existed. Gotovina and Markac are expected to leave the detention centre on Friday afternoon and fly back to Croatia.
Gotovina's defence lawyer, Greg Kehoe, said the appeal verdict demonstrated that Croatia's Operation Storm in 1995 to regain control over the last Serb-run enclaves on its territory had been entirely legitimate under international law.
"This judgment vindicates that operation as a proper and just attempt to bring back that land into Croatia. More importantly, it vindicates what kind of soldier General Gotovina was," Kehoe said.
However, the appeal verdict sparked outrage in Serbia, where the headline of the Blic daily's online edition read: "Scandalous decision: Gotovina and Markac free as if there had been no operation Storm."
Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, branded the ruling "scandalous", saying it endangered the general principle that war crimes must be punished.
By mostly majority verdicts the five judges said the original trial had erred significantly in ruling that Croatian artillery had illegally shelled four Serb-held towns – Knin, Benkovac, Gracac and Obrovac. In particular, it found that the criteria used – that any shell that landed more than 200 metres away from a military target must have been fired indiscriminately – was arbitary and "devoid of any specific reasoning".
As result, the appeal chamber found "that no reasonable trial chamber could conclude beyond reasonable doubt that the four towns were subject to unlawful artillery attacks".
The appeal judges also overturned the original trial verdict that Operation Storm had involved a "joint criminal enterprise" to expel ethnic Serbs from Croatia's Krajina region. They said the verdict depended in turn on the ruling that the artillery shelling of the four towns was illegal, which had been found to be unsound.
An estimated 600 Serbs died in the aftermath of Operation Storm, some by summary execution. About 200,000 fled their homes. But the appeal chamber pointed to evidence that Gotovina had taken steps to try to enforce discipline among his troops and prevent such crimes. It said the original trial verdict that he could have done more to investigate or prosecute the crimes later on was "terse and vague".
"This is not to say there were not crimes after the event. People came back and started exacting revenge. there is no question that happened," Kehoe said. "There were crimes, very heinous crimes that need to prosecuted." But he said that by vindicating the conduct of Operation Storm, the tribunal had "put itself on the right side of the rule of law".
The tribunal, set up by the UN in 1993, has been repeatedly criticised for the slow pace of its proceedings. The fact that Gotovina spent almost seven years in prison in The Hague following his arrest by Spanish police in Tenerife until his acquittal on Friday is likely to bring fresh scrutiny.