The trial of former Croatian general Ante Gotovina at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has concluded amid allegations of underhand tactics by the prosecution. Against the rules of a criminal trial, the prosecution brought new arguments in the closing statement.
Gotovina (54) has been on trial at the ICTY since March 2008. He is charged with organising a campaign of murder and plundering which had driven up to 200,000 ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995.
Ethnic Serbs declared the territory to be Serbian in 1991.
The prosecution called for gotovina to be sentences to 27 years. Meanwhile, the defense argued the defendant took all necessary measures to prevent crimes.
Luka Misetic, Gotovina’s defense lawyer, says that although there has been a fair trial, the defense office has been deprived of the right to refute the arguments brought by the prosecution in their final statement last Tuesday.
He told IJT: “It’s improper for the prosecutor to raise new arguments at the end of a trial. Those types of arguments need to be addressed during the trial, so that both the chamber and the defense have the opportunity to test the prosecutors”.
Misetic thinks the reason for these last-minute allegations is that the arguments of the prosecution were discredited by the defense during the trial.
“The prosecution wanted to come up with new theories to advance its case…but the accused has the right to hear what the allegations against him are during the trial so he has an opportunity to address them. That didn’t happen here”, he said.
The former general, who spends his time painting portraits in jail, is optimistic about the result of the judgement, which Misetic expects within ten months.
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Zrinski in 1566 and ICJ (HAGUE) Gen. Gotovina offer striking parallels
Croatian statesmen Petar Zrinsk (1621-1671) and Fran Krsto Frankapan (1643-1671) Petar Zrinsk and Fran Krsto Frankapan both outstanding as statesmen and writers, are among the most beloved figures in the history of Croatia. They had a great successes in liberating the areas occupied by the Turks. However, the Viennese Military council, instead of supporting them to free the rest of the Hungarian and Croatian lands, signed a shameful peace treaty with Turkey, by which the liberated territories had to be handed back to the Turks. The result of the rebellion against Vienna was a cruel public decapitation of Zrinski and Frankapan in Wiener Neustadt near Vienna in 1671. The remains of these two Croatian martyrs were buried in the Cathedral of Zagreb in 1919.
The letter sent by Petar Zrinski to his wife Katarina (in Croatian) just a day before his death is one of the most deeply moving texts ever written in the Croatian language. It was very soon translated and published in English.
My dear soul!
I most humbly beg of you, that you would not grieve your self to excess, at the sight of this Letter. To morrow, Ah Madam, I must tell it you, Alas! To morrow about ten of the clock in the morning, we must lose our Heads, I, and your brother. To day we have taken our last farewell each of other; and now I come also to take leave of you, my dear Soul, for ever; entreating you that you will please to pardon me all things, whereby in all my life time, I have ever offended you. God who hat created me, will have pity on me, whom I will also beseech, for I hope I shall to morrow be in his presence, that we may see each other in eternal glory before his Throne. As to any thing else, I can write nothing, neither concerning my Son, nor any disposal of what I have in the World, having resigned all to the will of God. Afflict not your self beyond measure, for God will have it so. Newstadt, the last day of my life: Being the 29th. of April, at 7 a clock at night, in the year 1671. God preserve you and bless you, and my Daughter Aurora Veronica. Amen.
Peter Count of Zerin
His wife Katarina, also an outstanding poetess, was imprisoned by general Spankau in a monastery in Graz, where she went insane and died in extreme poverty. Even the son of Peter and Katarina - Ivan Antun, the last of the Zrinski's, was imprisoned in Graz, solely because he belonged to this outstanding noble family. He died after 20 years of prison in Schlossberg in Graz out of pneumonia.
By bringing up the issue of “aggressor and the victim”, Slobodan Milosevic and Ante Gotovina on the same defendant`s bench was “tasteless in relation to values of the western civilisation. The only crime bigger than the war crime is the post war one, for which the aggressor is absolved.
The Hague and FOXNews and Snjezana Vukic, Dusan Stojanovic Serbs has finally shown its true face regarding its policy toward Croatia and this face is an ugly and racist one. I was there at the time and saw it. I was in Zagreb when the Yugoslav Serbs airforce was bombarding the city. I saw the victims of Serbs White Eagles (Beli orlovi) in Vocin. I was the first to meet those who had escaped death when the Serbs murdered patients and medical staff at the Vukovar hospital. It was a very desperate time when one of Europe's largest armies and its murderous auxiliaries were terrorizing Croatia. I even remember wondering out loud when the EU, UN and US in the Adriatic would intervene to stop the killing. Croats used shotguns and dynamite to try to oppose an overwhelming Serbs superiority in soldiers, MiGs, tanks and helicopter gunships. It was a desperate time when the Serbs laid siege to towns and villages and Serb militiamen in Chetnik costume moved in to murder old people with axes and used chain saws to dismember captured Croats at places like Vocin, Vukovar… During the 90-95 war the EU and the UN allowed the Serbs to get away with mass murder for years. When the US finally ended the Serbs' genocide project, Ante Gotovina and the Croatian Army were the primary instruments.
Operation Storm —
Supported by the United States, Gen. Gotovina led a sweeping military offensive — known as Operation Storm — that enabled Croatia to restore its control over territories annexed by local Serb forces loyal to Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The operation not only was instrumental in preventing Mr. Milosevic from achieving his goal of a "Greater Serbia," but it also averted a humanitarian nightmare in neighboring Bosnia. Let there be no doubt, Serbia is guilt as sin of the massacre at Vukovar, Dubrovnik Croatia. Srebrenica... One must ask, who committed the greater crime—the perpetrators Serbian murderers or International Community those who ignore it and enable such aggression.
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