Croatia to launch initiatives to refute Gotovina verdict findings

Croatia plans to launch initiatives to refute the findings of the UN war crimes court that Croatian political and military leaders participated in a joint criminal enterprise during the war in the 1990s.

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said on Monday that the government was planning to take action to refute the court’s findings, announced in its first-instance verdict against former generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac.

In its ruling against Gotovina and Markac, the court found that some of Croatia’s wartime leaders were part of a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to remove ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region by force or the threat of force during Operation Storm in 1995.

The two generals were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in the Storm offensive and sentenced to 24 and 18 years in prison.

Kosor recalled that during her recent talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic she had made it clear that Croatia considered the missing persons issue “the issue of all issues” and that all Croatian-Serbian talks should deal with it. She said that it was the biggest humanitarian and human rights problem because “every family has the right to know the truth.”