Anger in Croatia as 'war hero' gets 24 years for crimes against humanity

A COMMANDER hailed by Croats as a hero of the Balkan conflict has been convicted of war crimes by a UN court and sentenced to 24 years in prison for a campaign of shelling, shootings and expulsions aimed at driving Serbs out of a Croatian border region in 1995.

The conviction of General Ante Gotovina was a blow to the Croatian view of its wartime generals as national heroes who reclaimed Croatian land from a more powerful Serb force.

Thousands of Croatian war veterans watched the verdict live on a large video screen at Zagreb's main square, and jeered and booed the ruling, some frozen in disbelief, others crying.

"This is a verdict against the Croatian state," said Branko Borkovic, a former army commander. "All of us have been convicted, including the Republic of Croatia."

Gotovina was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, deportation, persecution and inhuman acts, during and immediately after a lightning campaign called Operation Storm that seized back land along Croatia's eastern border taken over by rebel Serbs early in the Balkan wars. Dozens of Serbs were killed and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes.

Croatia's ethnic war was one of a string of conflicts that erupted across the Balkans with the break up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The most deadly was in Bosnia, where Serbs battled Muslims and Croats in a four-year struggle that claimed some 100,000 lives.

In Croatia, then run by president Franjo Tudjman, ethnic Serbs backed by Serbia held the Krajina region for years. But as Belgrade's forces were stretched in the closing days of the Bosnian war - and as former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic turned his back on Croatian Serb rebels - Croatian forces seized the opportunity to strike back.

Troops launched artillery barrages that forced thousands of Serbs to flee. Soldiers and special police then roamed from village to village, killing and abusing villagers, many of them elderly.

Witnesses said during the trial that one elderly Serb woman was forced to strip to her underwear and play basketball. Judge Alphons Orie cited one witness who recalled finding his elderly mother and mentally ill brother shot dead after hearing a Croatian soldier say: "I killed another one." Another man was tied to a tree and surrounded with material that was then set ablaze.

The offensive is still a source of friction between Balkan neighbours Croatia and Serbia. Zagreb celebrates it with a national holiday, while Belgrade regards it as one of the worst crimes against Serbs committed during the Balkan wars.

Gotovina, 55, became a symbol for what Croatians saw as a war of liberation against Serbia's expansionist policies. Posters of him were plastered around the country after he went on the run following his indictment in 2001. He was arrested while dining in a restaurant on a Spanish island in 2005.

Former Croatian foreign minister Mate Granic criticised the verdicts as "shameful" and said they attempted to "change history and the historic truth".