Ante Gotovina

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Ante Gotovina at the Victory Day and Local Gratitude celebrations in 2015

Ante Gotovina (born October 12, 1955 in Tkon , Island of Pašman , SR Croatia , Yugoslavia ) is a retired general of the Croatian Armed Forces (HV) and former commander of the dissolved Croatian Defense Council (HVO).

Between 2005 and 2011 Gotovina was tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He was accused during the Croatia war as general of the Croatian Army and as commander of the Croatian forces of war crimes against Serbs to have commanded. On April 15, 2011, the International Criminal Court sentenced him in the first instance to a prison term of 24 years. The judgment was appealed on May 16, 2011. Gotovina was acquitted of all charges on November 16, 2012 and released after seven years in prison.

childhood

Ante Gotovina grew up in Pakoštane , a village on the Dalmatian coast, not far from his birthplace Tkon on the island of Pašman. His family still lives in Pakoštane and runs several restaurants there.

Military career

Foreign Legion

In 1972 Gotovina joined the French Foreign Legion at the age of 17 . There he became a non-commissioned officer in the 2nd Paratrooper Regiment of the Foreign Legion (2ème REP) and then a combat diver in the command unit of the 2ème REP ( CRAP ). In 1978 he retired from active service in the Foreign Legion. He then worked as a trainer for command units in Latin America and later took on French citizenship.

Croatian army

Overview of the Serbian-occupied areas of Croatia, most of which were recaptured by Operation Oluja in 1995 .

After Gotovina learned of the slowly emerging conflict in his home country from Croatian emigrants in Argentina , he returned to Croatia in 1990 and immediately volunteered for the weapons service. As a soldier in the 1st Guard Brigade, he fought in the Croatian War , especially in Slavonia, and rose to become commander of the troops. After being wounded and recovered, Gotovina retired to the staff of the HVO in Livno in Bosnia and Herzegovina .

From 1992 to 1994 he held the rank of major general and was then appointed lieutenant general. As commander, he was in command of the Split Military District between 1992 and 1996 . During this time Gotovina was actively involved in the planning of Operation Maslenica and several other operations in the Livno and Tomislavgrad regions . In Operation Oluja ("Storm") he was in command of the Sector South. Under his command, the Croatian troops conquered the Livanjsko polje , areas of the Dinara and Šator Mountains as well as the cities of Glamoč and Bosansko Grahovo and the area around Knin .

In the second half of 1995 Gotovina was the commander of the Croatian Army (HV) as well as the troops of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Croats (HVO) and, together with the Bosnian General Atif Dudaković, led the military operation Maestral , in which the Bosnian Army ( Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine ) and Croatian troops advanced up to 23 km from Banja Luka . Because of this loss of territory, the Serbian mission agreed to the Dayton Treaty and the Bosnian War was ended.

Gotovina was one of the co-signers of the "Letter of the 12 Generals" ( Pismo dvanaestorice generala ), an open letter from 2000 in which 12 members of the Croatian Generality criticized the Croatian government, politicians and media at the time. Because of his co-signature, Gotovina was retired from active service the day after the letter was published.

Before the International Criminal Court

Indictment and escape

Poster with the likeness of Gotovina, with the text addressed to those arriving from Montenegro : “Welcome to the land of General Ante Gotovina” (near Dubrovnik , 2005)

In 2001 Gotovina was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague with crimes against humanity allegedly committed by troops under his command.

The charges in the revised indictment include:

  • Killing of at least 37 people (according to the old indictment, 150 people were assumed)
  • Looting of private and public property
  • Pillage and destruction of villages and towns
  • Displacement of tens of thousands of Serbs

According to the prosecutor, Croatia's then President Franjo Tuđman was also involved in the planning and implementation. The supplementary indictment speaks of a “criminal organization”, consisting among others of Gotovina and Tuman, whose aim was “the violent and permanent expulsion of the Serbian population from the Krajina region”.

In the opinion of the defense, on the other hand, Operation Sturm was decisive in ending the war in the Balkans by defeating the Bosnian Serb army and was also supported by the USA due to the threat to the city of Bihać . The bombing of Knin was minimal compared to the Battle of Vukovar or other sieges.

The charges against Gotovina had great significance for the Croatian population (especially in the areas of Croatia from which Croatians were expelled by Serbs and have now been able to return after four years) because, given his surprisingly quick military successes, he is a national hero for many Croatians . Therefore, the accusations of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on this point were often met with incomprehension in Croatia.

Internationally, the Croatian authorities were accused of lacking interest in the capture of Gotovina. The Croatian government, on the other hand, had repeatedly stated that it did not know the whereabouts of the ex-general and that the state had done everything in its power to locate and extradite him.

Great Britain , the Netherlands and some Scandinavian countries opposed any further rapprochement between Croatia and the EU if Croatia did not fully cooperate with the competent tribunal. The start of Croatia's accession negotiations with the EU, originally scheduled for March 17, 2005, has therefore been postponed. In her subsequent June 2005 report, Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte stated that while Croatia was on the right track, it had not done enough to seize Gotovina. The allegation was not directed directly against the government of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader , but subordinate Croatian authorities were put under the responsibility of protecting Gotovina. In addition, del Ponte suspected the Catholic Church in Croatia and the Vatican of covering Gotovina. The official accession negotiations began on October 4 , as did those for Turkey's accession to the EU , after the chief prosecutor had certified the Croatian government “full cooperation” in the search for Ante Gotovina in her report the day before.

Arrest and Consequences

On December 8, 2005, del Ponte announced that Ante Gotovina had been arrested the day before in Tenerife . Gotovina was arrested during dinner in a hotel in the tourist resort of Playa de las Américas in the south of the island. It was said that he had falsified identity papers with him. The Spanish police have been looking for him intensively for several days. The ex-general hid on various islands in the archipelago.

Anton Nikiforov , Political Advisor to Lead Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, confirmed on March 22, 2007 that the Croatian authorities had played a key role in locating Ante Gotovina. Other authorities were not involved. Nikiforov also reported that the Spanish police were only involved after the information had been passed on from Croatia.

The following evening, several thousand people protested against Gotovina's arrest in the Croatian capital Zagreb . The protest was then violently ended after rioting by the police. The largest support rally, which took place on December 11th in Split and was organized by numerous associations of former soldiers and generals, was peaceful and without rough political slogans. The media reported that 40,000 to 60,000 people had gathered there. In protest, Gotovina's supporters erected roadblocks in several cities and set car tires on fire.

After Gotovina had previously been brought before the National Court of Justice in Madrid , he was finally transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on December 10, 2005. When he first appeared in court on December 12, the defendant denied any guilt. Both the Croatian government and the country's bishops considered Gotovina innocent. After Gotovina's arrest, the Archbishop of Split declared that the Croatian state would defend the general in court.

Trial and verdict

On March 10, 2008, the trial of Gotovina began before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Along with him, Generals Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač were also tried in court. The case was named Gotovina et al. negotiated. On March 5, 2009, the prosecution ended their argument. A subsequent motion by the defense to dismiss all charges was denied on April 3, 2009. The defense began presenting evidence on May 28, 2009 and ended on January 27, 2010.

In the closing arguments in August 2010, the public prosecutor called for Gotovina to be imprisoned for 27 years, while the defense pleaded for acquittal. On April 15, 2011, Ante Gotovina was sentenced in the first instance to 24 years in prison by the International Criminal Court. He was found guilty of the following crimes:

  • Persecution as a crime against humanity
  • Deportation as a crime against humanity
  • Looting of public and private property as a violation of the laws or customs of war
  • willful destruction as a violation of the laws or customs of war
  • Murder as a crime against humanity
  • Murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war
  • inhumane action as a crime against humanity
  • cruel treatment as a violation of the laws or customs of war

The court found the co-accused ex-general Mladen Markač guilty in the first instance and sentenced him to 18 years in prison. General Ivan Čermak, however, was acquitted.

Following the pronouncement of the verdict, Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor announced that the Croatian government would appeal the convictions and the court's assessment that Tu fungman acted as the mastermind behind the eviction.

Appeal and acquittal

On November 16, 2012, Gotovina was acquitted of all charges and released from custody on appeal. The Appeals Chamber decided unanimously that the lower court's assessment that artillery hits more than 200 meters away from a target considered legitimate as evidence of unlawful attacks on the towns in Krajina was incorrect. With a 3-2 majority decision, it was found that the evidence was insufficient to consider the shelling of the cities ordered by Gotovina and Markač to be illegal. Since the first instance conviction for the formation of a criminal association to expel Serbs from the Krajina is based on the illegality of the artillery attacks and the first instance did not establish a direct involvement in Croatia's policy of discrimination, this guilty verdict should also be set aside.

After the release

Ante Gotovina returned to Croatia after his release. In the vicinity of Biograd na Moru he runs an aquaculture where tuna are kept.

Awards (selection)

Others

In the 1980s, Gotovina was on trial in France for stealing jewelery and was serving a brief prison sentence.

The Croatian singer Niko Bete dedicated the song Ante, Ante svi smo za te (Ante, Ante we are all for you), which is popular in Croatia, to Gotovina .

On November 23, 2012 Gotovina was made an honorary citizen of the Croatian city of Split because of “special services in the Homeland War”.

literature

  • Nenad Ivanković: Ratnik: pustolov i general (jedna biografija) [The Warrior: Adventurer and General (A biography)]. Honos, Zagreb 2001, ISBN 953-98429-0-5 (Croatian).

Web links

Commons : Ante Gotovina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c icty.org: Judgment Summary for Gotovina et al. (PDF; 90 kB) , accessed April 15, 2011.
  2. ↑ Ex-Croat generals lawyers move to appeal war crimes verdicts ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from May 16, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thenewage.co.za
  3. ↑ No “criminal enterprise” , orf.at of November 16, 2012, accessed on November 16, 2012.
  4. ↑ See Ivica Đikić et al .: Gotovina. Stvarnost i mit, Zagreb 2010, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Ante Gotovina est un citoyen français , article by Le Monde Diplomatique of March 1, 2005 (accessed April 29, 2015)
  6. ↑ Le général Gotovina comparaît devant le TPIY , article by Le Monde of March 12, 2008 (accessed on April 29, 2015)
  7. ↑ Otvoreno pismo hrvatskih generala hrvatskoj javnosti , report of the Hrvatska Radiotelevizija | HRT from September 28, 2000 (accessed on September 22, 2012) ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hrt.hr
  8. ↑ Jonathan Steele: Croatia's president gives seven generals their marching orders . In: The Guardian , September 30, 2000 (accessed September 22, 2012)
  9. ↑ a b Overview of the documents on the ICTY website
  10. ↑ List of the ICTY's charges. Retrieved April 3, 2011 .
  11. ^ Croatian general brought peace, defense says , Reuters, March 12, 2008.
  12. ↑ Jutarnji list. Anton Nikiforov: 'Hrvatske tajne službe locirale su Antu Gotovinu' , March 22, 2007 (Croatian).
  13. ^ Die Presse : Croatian General Gotovina charged with war crimes ( memento of March 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) of March 11, 2008.
  14. ↑ 27 years imprisonment required for Ante Gotovina. In: Basler Zeitung, August 3, 2010
  15. ^ The trial against Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač was interrupted. At: kroatien-news.net, September 1, 2010
  16. ^ ORF: 24 years imprisonment for Croatian ex-General Gotovina
  17. ↑ Stefanie Bolzen, Thomas Roser: The storm ends behind bars. Welt Online , accessed April 25, 2011 .
  18. ^ UN tribunal overturns judgment against Croatian general. In: Spiegel Online , November 16, 2012.
  19. ↑ Appeals Chamber acquits and Orders Release of Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač , press release of the International Criminal Court of 16 November 2012 called on 16 November 2012 found.
  20. ↑ Summary of the appeal judgment (PDF, 107 kB, English)
  21. ↑ Detailed appeal judgment (PDF, 1 MB, English)
  22. ↑ Gotovina i ribari spašavali farmu tuna od olujnog juga , vecernji.hr, November 14, 2014 (Croatian).
  23. ↑ Celebrated as a war hero, wanted as a war criminal , FAZ , December 9, 2005.
  24. ↑ Ex-General Gotovina becomes an honorary citizen of Split , APA report on derStandard.at of November 23, 2012, accessed on November 26, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Gotovina, ante
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Croatian general
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Pašman , Yugoslavia