A few days before the sentencing of generals Anto Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markač in The Hague, the BBC published a profile of "a former French legionnaire whom Operation Storm brought to the very top of Croatian nationalism".
"When Ante Gotovina led Croatian forces in the reconquest of the breakaway region of Krajina in 1995, many of his compatriots saw him as a hero," says the beginning of the text about Gotovina.
As stated in the text, war crimes prosecutors quickly became interested in the case and accused General Gotovina of being responsible for ethnic cleansing.
The BBC reported that around 150 Serbian civilians were killed, and that more than 200 left their homes "in long lines of cars and tractors loaded with things."
Referring to the statements heard during the trial before the Hague court, the BBC notes that Gotovina encouraged the destruction of Serbian communities and that he "failed to save the lives of 150 Serbs" who were killed "with weapons, knives or were set on fire".
He left Yugoslavia at the age of 16
Gotovina allegedly left Tito's Yugoslavia at the age of 16 and spent some time on a merchant ship before joining the French Foreign Legion, where he "built a reputation as a fearless soldier with a taste for beautiful women."
It goes on to say that Gotovina fought in Chad and spent a good part of the 80s in South America, especially Guatemala, "where he trained paramilitary formations for the civil war." After that he was in Paraguay, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil and finally got French citizenship.
It was stated that he “loved the high life, and the Canary Islands became his regular destination.
He was arrested in 2005 in Tenerife, which was a big relief for Zagreb, which claimed that Gotovina was not in Croatian territory, despite reports that the fugitive general was hiding in Croatian monasteries or in monasteries in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina inhabited by Croats.
The article states that Gotovina was deeply involved in right-wing politics. "Chief among his allies was Franjo Tuđman, a nationalist leader who later became the president of independent Croatia," the BBC said.
"In 2000, the new Croatian president Stjepan Mesić sent Gotovina into early retirement along with six other generals after they refused to participate in war crimes investigations," writes the BBC, adding that a year later Gotovina was indicted.
The BBC reminds that Croatia's accession negotiations with the EU are ongoing, and that constant cooperation in this case is a prerequisite for the successful continuation of negotiations.
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