Croatia celebrates generals’ acquittal

ZAGREB: Croatia celebrated into the early hours yesterday after two of its generals were freed by the UN war crimes tribunal, with many feeling the verdict vindicated Zagreb’s role in the 1991-95 war against Belgrade-backed rebel Serbs.
Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac returned home to a hero’s welcome Friday after their dramatic acquittal by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The court cleared them of committing crimes against Croatian Serbs during the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia. Many here see the ruling as confirmation that they fought a justified war.
“The verdict confirmed that the liberation of our territories was not a criminal enterprise,” President Ivo Josipovic said late Friday as he received the generals in Zagreb, quoting a term that prosecutors had used against them.
Gotovina and Markac, considered heroes in Croatia, were jailed last year for 24 and 18 years respectively for the murder of Croatian Serbs during their country’s struggle for independence and the bloody, ethnically driven breakup of Yugoslavia.
But the appeals court overturned the conviction after ruling that artillery attacks on Serb-inhabited towns did not amount to unlawful attacks on civilians.
Judges also rejected the lower court’s finding that there was “a joint criminal enterprise whose purpose was the permanent and forcible removal of Serb civilians from the Krajina region” in Croatia.
Prosecutors had alleged that Operation Storm led by Gotovina was devised by the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and senior Croat military commanders to drive Serbs from the country.
“Our Homeland war is clean, it belongs to our history, it is a basis on which we build our future,” Gotovina said after meeting the president.
Josipovic added that the verdict was a “symbolic satisfaction” for all the victims of Vukovar, a town that stands as a symbol of Croatia’s wartime horrors.
On Sunday Vukovar will commemorate the 21st anniversary of the eastern town’s fall to Serb forces, the bloodiest episode of the 1991-95 war.
Vukovar Mayor Zeljko Sabo has invited the two generals to attend the ceremonies but it is not clear whether they will.
After their return on Friday, the generals appeared at a rally in Zagreb’s main square where tens of thousands of euphoric Croatians cheered them, chanting their names.
Smaller celebrations were held throughout the country with people waving Croatian flags and singing nationalist songs.
Saturday’s press echoed the sentiment of vindication widely felt in the country.
In neighboring Serbia, the acquittal was met with bitter outrage and Belgrade said it would scale back its cooperation with the UN court in protest.
The UN refugee agency put the number of Serbs who fled from Operation Storm at 250,000 while other UN agencies estimate some 600 people were killed. In all some 20,000 people died in the Croatian war.
Many Serbs suggested the decision was politically motivated to allow Croatia to enter the European Union with a clean slate.
Croatia will join the bloc in July 2013, having fulfilled the condition to hand over war crimes suspects to the ICTY.