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| Europe | ||
| Three generals on trial for war crimes in Croatia | ||
| 2008-03-12 | ||
The Hague, 11 March (AKI) – Three Croatian generals went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday for crimes allegedly committed against Serb civilians in 1995.
More than 350 Serb civilians were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed and up to 250,000 Serbs were deported from the country, prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court. He said he would prove that the three generals were part of a “joint criminal undertaking” aimed at the “violent elimination of Serbs” from Croatia. Serbs, who accounted for 12 percent of Croatia’s four million people before the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in 1991, rebelled against Croatia’s secession and proclaimed their own Republic of Serb Krajina. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed by the Croatian state in World War II and feared repetition of the crimes when Croatian nationalist president Franjo Tudjman, who led the country to secession, came to power. Tieger said that Tudjman, who died in 1999, masterminded the Storm operation, not only to retake territories controlled by local Serbs, but to completely eliminate Serbs from the country. The decision was taken at a meeting on 31 July 1995, when Tudjman allegedly told his generals that Serbs “should be dealt such a blow that they practically disappear,” Tieger said.
According to the indictment, Gotovina, Cermak and Markac were the key generals who carried out “the joint criminal undertaking”. Tieger claimed the operation in which Croatian forces crushed the Serb rebellion, “for most Serbs meant the end of life on the territories on which their predecessors lived”. Croatian forces were “systematically looting and destroying their property, mistreating and killing civilians”, Tieger told the court. He said the prosecution would present 134 witnesses to prove the charges. Since it was founded by the United Nations in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for crimes committed in last decade Balkan wars and more than fifty have already been sentenced to over 700 years in prison. | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 I hope they pursue this to Berlin. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-03-12 09:02 |