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| Europe | ||
| Croatian fugitive general seized | ||
| 2005-12-08 | ||
| A Croatian general charged with war crimes has been held in Spain, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor has said. Ante Gotovina was one of the most wanted men from the 1990s Balkan wars. He is accused of war crimes against Serb civilians during a Croatian offensive to expel Serb forces from the country in 1995. Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, had repeatedly sought Gen Gotovina's detention. Gen Gotovina was arrested on Wednesday night in the Canary Islands, Ms Del Ponte said, and was due to be transferred to The Hague. Spanish officials indicated that he could appear at an extradition hearing in Madrid as early as Thursday. 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. Speaking in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, Ms Del Ponte said she hoped Gen Gotovina's detention would speed up efforts to arrest Bosnian Serb fugitives Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. 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. Gen Gotovina, 50, 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. He was sent into early retirement in 2000 when Croatia promised to investigate allegations of war crimes among its military during the 1990s. Croatia has claimed that he subsequently fled the country. He vowed never to turn himself in.
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| Posted by:Steve |