General Ante Gotovina Fact Sheet

THE UNITED STATES PLAYED A KEY ROLE IN OPERATION STORM

In order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in neighboring Bosnia, the Clinton administration gave Zagreb the green light to launch a sweeping military offensive.  The US played a pivotal role in the operation, supplying Croatian forces with military and intelligence assistance such as the use of unmanned drones to pinpoint Serbian positions on the ground.

“Americans in military uniform, operating from a cream-colored trailor near the runway, directed the GNAT-750 drone to photograph the Serb troop positions and weapons emplacements. The images were transmitted back to base, analyzed and then passed on to the Pentagon.  According to top Croat intelligence officials, copies were also sent to the headquarters of the Croatian general in command of ‘Operation Storm.’”  - Newsweek, What Did the CIA Know?  Aug 27, 2001

“Operation Storm was a stunning military assault. In just four days, the Croatian Army regained territory that had been held by rebel Serbs for four years. The Croatian Army then linked up with Bosnian Croat forces and began to roll over Serbian units in neighboring Bosnia. Those defeats, along with the NATO bombing, helped bring the Serbs to the negotiating table in Dayton.” - Raymond Bonner, The NY Times, March 21, 1999

“Because we knew Bosnia’s survival was at stake, we had not tightly enforced the arms embargo.  As a result, both the Croatians and the Bosnians were able to get some arms, which helped them survive.  We had also authorized a private company to use retired US military personnel to improve and train the Croatian army.” – Bill Clinton, My Life: Vol II: The Presidential Years, p265, 2004, 2005

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke referred to the Croatian army as his “junkyard dogs” and acknowledges that the Croatian army was used to inflict substantial losses to the Milosevic-controlled Yugoslav army and shift momentum of the war.  (To End A War, Richard Holbrooke, 1998)

RAMIFICATIONS OF THE INDICTMENT FOR UNITED STATES AND NATO
(Source: Trigger Happy: Putting the Hague Court on Trial, Wall Street Journal – Europe, Aug 31, 2001)

General Gotovina is not charged with individual crimes (as a trigger man), he is charged as the commander of an operation that, according to Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, was criminal from its conception to its execution – largely on account of the flight of thousands of Serb civilians in advance of the Croat forces.    The premise of General Gotovina’s indictment is that any use of overwhelming force – since civilian casualties and population flight are clearly foreseeable – should be considered illegal.

From start to finish, Operation Storm, was executed as if it were drawn from NATO’s best playbook: a lightning offensive using highly mobile ground forces, heavy firepower, and air support, designed to be decisive.  It was moreover carried out in a way that permitted the local civilian population to leave the combat zone, which is the reason there was civilian flight.

If the decisive use of overwhelming force is to be criminalized, largely on the grounds that it may prompt civilians to flee the fighting, then it will not be long before NATO officers and officials are in the dock.

As for the other Western powers, they will have to understand that their own ability to use decisive force will be seriously undermined.   The UN will be unable to prevent any ambitious magistrate, like Spain’s Baltasar Garzon – who made a name for himself by indicting General Augusto Pinochet – from asserting “universal” jurisdiction to judge the military actions of others. 

The near indictment of American General Tommy Franks in a Belgian court in 2003 for “command responsibility” over purported war crimes committed by coalition forces in Iraq is a prime example of the type of precedent that will be set if General Gotovina’s indictment is carried forward.

CHARGES IN THE INDICTMENT ARE FACTUALLY INCORRECT AND WITHOUT MERIT

CROATIA DID NOT ‘ETHNICALLY CLEANSE’ THE KRAJINA SERBS

In the prosecution testimony in the Milosevic trial at The Hague, overwhelming evidence has emerged that the former dictator sought to consolidate his grip over large chunks of Bosnia and Kosovo by repopulating those areas with the Serbs from the Krajina region in Croatia.

Milan Babic, one of the Krajina’s political leaders, testified that the Croatian Serb leadership gave the orders to withdraw the military and civilian populations in the Serbian areas several days prior to the commencement of Operation Storm. [Please see order given by Milan Martic]

In his second day of direct testimony, a hardened Yugoslav Army (JNA) intelligence officer told of receiving advance notice of Operation Storm and discovering that all other units of the Army of Republika Srpska Krajina (ARSK), Serbian MUP and paramilitaries had been withdrawing leaving 4000 men of the 21st Corps and about 20,000 civilians to fend for themselves. The 21st Corps realized they had been “sacrificed.”  The witness speculated the reason might have been so they could be used for propaganda purposes against Croatia. (Milosevic Trial, Oct 30, 2002)

“The fact is, the population left before the Croatian army got there,” says Peter Galbraith who was US ambassador to Croatia in 1995. “You can’t deport people who have already left.” – Newseek, Aug. 27, 2001

Galbraith again:  “We have to understand first of all that the Serb population left their homes before the Croatian Army took over, so it is very difficult to defend the view that the Croatian Army drove out the Serbs. This was very different from Prijedor, Visegrad and other places that are synonyms for the Bosnian genocide.”  -  Interview in Dani (Sarajevo), August 3, 2001

“Amazingly, that very charge is contradicted by the Prosecutor’s own spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann.  Ms. Hartmann published a book in 1999 in which she wrote that Milosevic, not Croatia, ethnically cleansed the area in question.  “It was Belgrade that evacuated the Serbs from Krajina and led them to Banja Luka and northern Bosnia.  This was done so that Belgrade could later justify holding on to these Bosnian territories during future peace negotiations over Bosnia-Herzegovina. . . . One might argue that a prosecutor is not bound by the public statements of her official spokesperson, but my concern is that such blatant inconsistencies evidence a lack of prosecutorial care and attention to accuracy.”  - Larry A. Hammond, Testimony before the House International Relations Committee - Feb 28, 2002

Hartmann’s 1999 book devotes an entire chapter to Krajina entitled “L’Abandon de la Krajina” (The Abandonment of Krajina”) which directly contradicts the ICTY indictment against General Gotovina.  Hartmann is very clear in detailing how the Serbs planned and ordered the Serbian evacuation of occupied Croatian territory.  Specifically, the chapter claims:

The Serbs organized the evacuation of Krajina. Every (Serb) refugee could confirm that the population had fled at the request of their own leadership. Every soldier was a witness to the deliberate withdrawal of the Serbian military, the officers abandoning the night shift at the front and the retreat of heavy armor. She describes the whole process as the “strategic abandonment” of Krajina The retreat was to help secure conquered territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to extract heavy arms left in Krajina by the JNA (Yugoslav National Army) The main aim was to secure 66% of Bosnia-Herzegovina by repopulating ‘cleansed’ territories with Serbs from the Krajina.

GENERAL GOTOVINA IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMES COMMITTED AFTER OPERATION STORM

It is well known that:

      - Civilian authority was re-established over the territory by August 8, 1995;
General Gotovina was already in Bosnia preparing for further Operations as of August 8, 1995.

- Most of the crimes committed during the operation were done by returning civilians, and roving Croatian paramilitaries seeking revenge, not by the Croatian army.

The Tribunal has also learned that nearly 300 of the Croatian soldiers who did commit isolated atrocities during the operation were ordered by General Gotovina to be tried by military tribunals and sentenced to prison terms.  – Washington Times, Facing Reality at the ICTY, Aug 5, 2003)

Most of the crimes occurred in the three months after the military operation ended.  – Newsweek 8/27/01

“I cannot find a single document or fact which points to Gotovina “as the man who ordered the atrocities, says Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, a leading Croatian human rights advocate.  – Newsweek 8/27/01

Sonja Biserko, a human rights activist in Serbia who interviewed hundreds of refugees from Krajina blames “paramilitaries, police and ordinary citizens” for the crimes.  – Newsweek 8/27/01

“ ... [T]he last paragraph of the indictment (paragraph 44) alleges that “Croatian forces directed a massive artillery assault on Knin (the city described by the Serbs as their “capitol”).  At least three American journalists who were in the region on the day of the supposed “massive artillery assault” saw no evidence of one.  It is a reasonably safe assumption that had there been such an assault the destructive effects would have been evident.”  - Larry A. Hammond, Testimony before the House International Relations Committee - Feb 28, 2002

GENERAL GOTOVINA's INDICTMENT WAS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED FROM THE OUTSET

The Hague Tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, sought a Croatian scapegoat to offset charges that her office was being “biased” against the Serbs.

Del Ponte speaks in front of United States Institute of Peace, June 14 2005:

- “When Karadzic and Mladic are in The Hague we will have gone a long way toward ensuring the success of the tribunal.”

- “By postponing the accession talks (with Croatia) on March 15, the European Union has given strong encouragement to Belgrade to deliver Karadzic and Mladic.  Prime minister Kostunica, who was suspicious that a different standard would apply to Croatia and Serbia seems to have responded to the consistent line implemented by the European Union towards Zagreb.  It was a strong incentive for him to be more ________.  [In contrast] if the EU would have relented on Gotovina and allowed Croatia to proceed with accession talks, Belgrade would lose its most important incentive to pursue Karadzic and Mladic.”