The war in the former Yugoslavia ended (well, at least the shooting stopped) in 1995. Ten years later, and many of the most wanted war criminals have been hiding in plain sight. Diplomatic niceties being what they are, no country wants to step on toes by arresting a war crimes suspect without the permission and cooperation of the country harboring the criminal. Perhaps finally we can begin to think that justice may well be at hand. Perhaps.
I’ve written at some length about the two most notorious still at-large war criminals, Radovan Karadzic, the former President of the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb enclave in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Srebrenica. Less well chronicled has been the “search” for former Croatian general Ante Gotovina, who is accused of killing and mistreating Serbs in Croatia’s Krajina region during 1995’s “Operation Storm”.
MADRID, Spain (CNN) — Former Croatian general Ante Gotovina has been transferred to the Hague, where he will stand trial for war crimes in charges stemming from the Balkans conflict last decade.
Gotovina was arrested Wednesday night in Spain’s Canary Islands. He left Madrid on Saturday morning for the Netherlands, where the Hague is located. He was taken to the Detention Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia — the full name of the war crimes tribunal.
The tribunal said Gotovina “is charged with persecutions, murder, plunder of property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, deportation and forced displacement, and other inhumane acts, which took place under his command and control, against the Serb population during and in the aftermath of the August 1995 Croatian military offensive known as Operation Storm.”
The tribunal said Storm “was intended to establish Croatian authority over the Krajina region of Croatia” where Serbs lived.
“According to the indictment, another purpose of the operation was the forcible and permanent removal of the Serb population from that region. The indictment alleges that as commander of the Split Military District, Gotovina was the overall operations commander of Operation Storm in the southern portion of the Krajina region.”
The indictment “alleges that Croatian forces killed at least 150 Serbs in Krajina while subjecting large numbers of others to inhumane treatment, humiliation and degradation. Thousands of Serb dwellings were destroyed. and the local Serb population was subjected to plunder and persecution, according to the indictment.
Gotovina’s continued fugitive status has seriously hampered Croatia’s efforts to move forward and develop both their economy and standing in the international community. Now that Gotovina is finally in custody, Croatia has a legitimate shot at gaining membership in both NATO and the European Community. It also puts a great deal of pressure on the Serbian government to step up efforts to capture Karadzic and Mladic- not that they couldn’t pick these two up almost immediately if circumstances dictated.
With Gotovina finally in the Hague, Serbs can no longer cloud the issue by pointing fingers at Croatia and accusing them of engaging in the same sort of behavior Serbs know full well they are guilty of.
There had been questions about Croatia’s resolve in finding Gotovina, and the Croatian government issued a statement saying the arrest “represents an affirmation of the reliability of the assertions made by the Republic of Croatia that he was not within the reach of the Croatian authorities nor was he in Croatian territory,” a reality that it says underscores the government’s credibility.
The reality is that the Croatian government’s dissembling is really a load of crap. Gotovina has been hiding in plain sight for ten years, and for Croatia to claim that they had no way of getting to him is simply both dishonest and inaccurate. Of course, this is the same sort of reasoning that Serbia has been using for the past ten years. Trust me on this one; I spent enough time in the former Yugoslavia to understand that if the government wanted to find and apprehend someone, it could be done in very short order. This is as true now as it was before and during the war. If Serbia wants to demonstrate that it is serious about finally becoming a full member of the international community, then it needs to do the right thing and hand over Mladic and Karadzic. Anything less, and Serbia deserves to remain the Third World basket case that it still is.
No one should be patting Croatia on the bag after dragging their feet for ten years on locating and arresting Gotovina. Nonetheless, it is a step in the right direction, and the fact that Serbia now recognizes their predicament can only be seen as a good thing. Justice delayed may in fact be justice denied, but late is certainly better than not at all, no?
