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Croatian war crimes' suspect held in Spain

Top war crimes suspect General Ante Gotovina

BELGRADE (Serbia-Montenegro): Top Croatian war crimes fugitive Gen. Ante Gotovina was arrested in Spain's Canary Islands after more than four years on the run, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor said on Thursday.

``Ante Gotovina was arrested last night in Spain. He's finally now in detention,'' prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said.

The 50-year-old fugitive soon will be transferred from the Canary Islands to a detention unit at the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, she said.

Croatia has been under intense pressure from the European Union to arrest Gen. Gotovina and turn him over to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for trial on charges he masterminded the killing of at least 150 Serbs and the expulsion of some 150,000 others during Croatia's bitter 1991-1995 war.

Regarded as a hero

The retired army general, one of the three most-wanted war crimes fugitives from the Balkan Wars, is regarded as a hero by many in Croatia, and the Government's failure to arrest him had blocked Croatia's E.U. membership talks for years. E.U. negotiations finally began in October, after Ms. Del Ponte said the country was cooperating with the Tribunal.

The former general has been at large since the tribunal accused him in 2001 of the wartime atrocities during the 1995 offensive code-named ``Operation Storm'' against the Croatian Serb stronghold of Knin.

The Hague indictment alleges that Gen. Gotovina ``participated in a joint criminal enterprise, the common purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the [Croatian] Serb population ... including by the plunder, damage or outright destruction of property of the Serb population, so as to discourage or prevent members of that population from returning to their homes and resuming habitation.'' — AP

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