Could the Gotovina judgement be used against the British Army?
Date: 10/15/2012

Brian Gallagher

The conviction of Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac by a UN court has met with unprecedented criticism from top western military officers and legal experts. The criticism is in relation to the now infamous 200-metre rule, upon which the entire conviction of the Generals rests. General Sir Timothy Granville - Chapman, recently retired from the British Army, in his report for the defence effectively says that British Army operations in Afghanistan do not reach the same standard the Croats did in 1995. The implications are clear.
Croatia’s Operation Storm in 1995, run in coordination with the United States and with help from the Bosnian military, liberated large swathes of Croatia and saved Bosnia-Herzegovina. It prevented a Srebrenica style massacre at Bihac, in Bosnia. Milosevic was defeated and brought to the negotiating table. The Serbian leadership ordered and organised their own people to leave Croatia.
The United Nations – who failed to protect Bosnians at Srebrenica – has decreed that in fact it was a Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), using arms of the Croatian state to remove Serbs from Croatia. The JCE is based on Croatian artillery attacks during Operation Storm. The judges said that shells that fell outside of 200 metres from a legitimate target were unlawful. In this case, the 5-6% of shells that fell outside of the range - killing and injuring no-one - were designed to force Serbs to leave. Everything relies on this JCE; without it all the charges have to fall as everything else was due to it. The 200-metre rule was constructed by the judges in their decision; it was not mentioned during the trial and thus the generals had no chance to refute it.
General Chapman is an artillery officer of 41 years service in the British Army. was the commander in chief of deploying the British Army into Iraq and the run-up to Afghanistan. He is currently the Master Gunner St.James Park.
His observations, given within a defence motion earlier this year is of particular interest as they refer to a current conflict: the one in Afghanistan. In reference to Operation Storm, he says the evidence suggests the Croatians gunners took “particular care”, borne out by the high proportion of rounds that fell within 200M. Given the state of the equipment and so on, he even goes so far as to say that “In many ways such accuracy is remarkable…”
He points out that the judges came to their conclusion regarding the 200–metre rule some 15 years after Operation Storm. There have been advances in artillery, reaching a new level of sophistication. He says: “Despite these advances, artillery remains an area weapon, and in the British case, a gun in Afghanistan typically delivers only 90% of its rounds within a 250 metre box at its operational range.” Given that the Croats are considered to have had an accuracy of some 95% within 200 metres, then it’s fairly clear that the British troops could well face some from of prosecution, no matter how conscientious they are. Indeed, General Chapman says that, “…the judgement is also extraordinarily unsafe in terms of the precedent it sets in the use of indirect fire.” It could generally, “…bring about serious consequences for commanders concerned.”
General Chapman’s observations are important as it shows how British soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan could be prosecuted if the Gotovina judgement is allowed to stand. Indeed, there has been some concern in the British press over the fairness of the British led Iraq Historic Allegations Team which is investigating UK troops who had served in Iraq. The 200 metre rule could be an easy basis to prosecute British troops – perhaps by prosecutors wishing to make a name for themselves or a desire to show the world how ‘fair’ the British are i.e. political reasons.
Perhaps it could be even used internationally against Britain’s political leadership by UN courts or national courts exercising ‘universal jurisdiction’. The JCE, which was concocted on the basis of the 200-metre rule, effectively criminalised the Croatian President, ministers, and even drags in the Croatian parliament – as well as the military. Will British Prime Ministers past and present have to consult lawyers on the matter?
What has the ICTY made of General Chapman’s views? On 21 June, the appeals judges rejected the motion that contained his report. The decision has only just been made public. The judges said that the evidence could have been admitted at the original trial. This is ludicrous. How could the defence have known the judges would come up with a 200-metre rule? Were they supposed to guess? Although the judges have said that their decision on this evidence should not be taken as an indicator of their final decision, it does not inspire confidence.

The appeals verdict will be announced in December. Hopefully, the judges will overturn the verdict in its entirety. If not, aside for the bad news for the Croatian generals, it could be a most unwelcome Christmas present for British troops serving in Afghanistan.

Western experts challenge Gotovina verdict

An interesting development regarding the verdict to Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač in April 2011.

A number of legal experts from US and UK, including two former Judge Advocate Generals of the US Army analyised the trial and verdict. Their official application for amicus curiae status, where their views are presented, is on the link bellow in pdf.

Here's the list of the 12 experts, with combined experiance of nearly 300 years:

Laurie R. Blank
Air Commodore Bill Boothby (Ret.)
Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, (Ret.)
William J. Fenrick
Professor C H B Garraway, CBE
Dean Donald J. Gutter, South Texas College of Law
Mj. Gen. Walter B. Huffman, (Ret.)
Mark E. Newcomb
Mj. Gen. Thomas J. Roming, (Ret.)
Col. Raymond C. Ruppert, (Ret.)
Gary Solis

Their resumes are on the first few pages of the application. The application itself is 46 pages, with very detailed explanations of the team's findings.
http://icr.icty.org/LegalRef/CMSDocStor ... 353013.pdf

Their concerns are, among others, that the verdict to Gotovina and Markač esentially creates a dangerous precedant for ongoing military operations and international law, which also brings into question the right on defensive war.

Hague conviction of Croatian general rekindles designs for ‘Greater Serbia’

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner - The Washington Times

Croatia is headed toward another war. The Balkans - again - will explode with violence. It is only a matter of time. And the so-called “international community” has been pivotal in stoking the flames of ethnic conflict.

Recently, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in The Hague, Netherlands, sentenced Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina to 24 years in prison. The ICTY’s ruling rightly has sparked angry protests across Croatia.

Gen. Gotovina has been convicted for having “command responsibility” over an August 1995 military campaign, known as Operation Storm, that effectively ended the Croat-Serbian war. The ICTY alleges that the Croatian general oversaw the expulsion of 100,000 ethnic Serbs and the murder of hundreds of civilians. According to the United Nations war crimes court, the campaign constituted a “joint criminal enterprise.”

The ICTY’s verdict is preposterous and outrageous. Gen. Gotovina is not a war criminal; rather, he is a Croatian patriot and hero whose campaign restored Croatia’s territorial integrity. Moreover, it delivered a decisive blow to the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s dream of a “Greater Serbia.”

From 1991 until 1995, Milosevic’s marauders rampaged across the region. He used the disintegration of Yugoslavia - a synthetic multinational state - to advance his goal of establishing a Great Serbian empire stretching from the Danube to the Adriatic. In Croatia, Serbian paramilitaries - aided and abetted by the Yugoslav army - waged a brutal war of aggression. The result: A third of Croatia’s territory was annexed, more than 180,000 Croatians were ethnically cleansed, and nearly 20,000 civilians were murdered. Milosevic’s aim was to unite the truncated parts of Croatia with the nearly 70 percent of territory his forces had carved out in neighboring Bosnia. Call it state-building through genocidal partition.

Operation Storm put a stop to all of this. Gen. Gotovina’s army launched a U.S.-backed offensive that was a stunning success: Civilian casualties were minimized, the campaign lasted just three days, and the crushing defeat of the rebel Serbs eventually paved the way for the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.

Moreover, numerous media outlets - The Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Jerusalem Post - have investigated Operation Storm and have concluded that Gen. Gotovina is innocent of any wrongdoing. He never personally ordered or tolerated the commission of any crimes. In fact, the ICTY’s prosecution was dismal on this point. It failed to show any kind of proof that Gen. Gotovina was responsible for orchestrating a criminal conspiracy. The reason is a simple one: He couldn’t have.

The orders to evacuate the Serbian population from the so-called “Krajina” zone of occupation came from Belgrade several days before the commencement of Operation Storm. Milosevic, realizing he was facing a military humiliation, ordered Croatia’s Serbs transferred to Bosnia and Kosovo to consolidate his revanchist gains there. This was done before Croatian forces even launched their campaign. Hence, the entire Gotovina conviction and prosecution rests on a giant fraud: The removal of the Serbian population occurred under the explicit command of local Serb authorities acting under the authority of Belgrade. Therefore, Croatian forces could not have committed “ethnic cleansing.” The ICTY verdict is a sham.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=g ... PVtIhC-utg

Croatia’s triumph
Gotovina’s acquittal vindicates right of nationhood

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
The Washington Times

Thursday, November 29, 2012
Croatia’s national independence finally has been secured. This is the real meaning of the recent ruling by the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague to overturn the conviction of Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina. Last year, the U.N. court convicted Gen. Gotovina, along with junior Croatian Gen. Mladen Markac, of responsibility for war crimes in the 1995 military operation that led to the recapture of territory seized by rebel ethnic Serbs. The tribunal’s appeal judges, however, in a 3-2 decision last week ruled that both men are innocent. The court’s chief justice called it the “final verdict.” Croatia has rightly cheered the decision.
Gen. Gotovina embodies Croatia’s struggle for independence. In 1991, the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia triggered a Croatian-Serbian war. Backed by the Yugoslav army and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Serb rebels waged a brutal campaign of aggression against Croatia and, later, Bosnia. Milosevic’s goal was clear: genocide. His Serb marauders annexed nearly one-third of Croatia’s territory, killed nearly 20,000 people and ethnically cleansed the land of more than 200,000 civilians. Entire cities, such as Vukovar, were razed to the ground.
In Bosnia, Milosevic’s forces did even more damage. They systematically slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and Croats, seized almost 70 percent of Bosnian land, expelled almost 2 million people and erected a vast network of mass graves and concentration camps. Milosevic’s aim was to forge an ethnically pure Greater Serbian empire, stretching from the Danube to the Adriatic.
By the summer of 1995, he was on the verge of achieving his neofascist, imperialist project. Yet, led by Gen. Gotovina’s forces and supported by the United States, the Croatian government launched a lightning military offensive known as Operation Storm. The offensive restored Croatia’s territorial integrity. It dealt a decisive blow to Milosevic’s dream of a Greater Serbia. Gen. Gotovina’s army liberated Croatian lands. Moreover, the army swept into neighboring Bosnia, freeing the besieged pocket of Bihac from a Srebrenica-style massacre, and then rolling back Bosnian Serb forces. Gen. Gotovina’s actions effectively smashed Belgrade’s campaign of mass killings and ethnic cleansing. No one — neither the European Union, the United Nations nor NATO — did more to end the savage fighting in Croatia and Bosnia than Gen. Gotovina. Rather than being a war criminal, he is a great Croatian patriot and hero.
His crime, however, in the eyes of Belgrade and prosecutors at The Hague, is that he played a pivotal role in achieving Croatia’s hard-won independence. From its inception, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia was a repressive, synthetic state. Its captive people, especially the Croats, hungered to be free of Belgrade’s iron grip. Hence, the dissolution of Yugoslavia was not only inevitable but also signified a major victory for democracy and national self-determination. Yet, for the Serbs, this meant the loss of imperial prestige, regional hegemony and the benefits of economic exploitation. Hence, for decades, their aim was to cripple Croatian nationalism by presenting it as illegitimate.
This is why Belgrade feverishly lobbied The Hague tribunal to go after Gen. Gotovina and demonize Operation Storm. U.N. prosecutors took the bait. They sought to equalize guilt on all sides of the conflict by attempting to criminalize the Croatian military offensive. They charged that Operation Storm expelled nearly 200,000 Serbs and killed hundreds more in a deliberate effort to ethnically cleanse Croatia. In other words, the U.N. prosecution sought to transform Croatians from victims to aggressors, thereby entrenching the notion that Croatia was founded upon war crimes. The Gotovina case threatened to undermine Zagreb’s national sovereignty, the security of its borders and its international legitimacy. Serb revanchists were hoping to use the Gotovina conviction as a pretext to restore a Greater Serbia — although through legal means instead of military force.
The prosecutors were wrong — and obviously so — on almost every point. It is a matter of record that Croatia’s Serbian population fled prior to the onslaught of Operation Storm. Days before the offensive, Milosevic’s regime ordered the Serb rebels to evacuate in the face of overwhelming Croatian military might. The Serb strongman realized he no longer could hold on to large chunks of Croatia. He directed that Croatia’s ethnic Serbs be dispersed to Bosnia and Kosovo, hoping to consolidate his strategic gains. Therefore, Gen. Gotovina’s army could not have committed ethnic cleansing because that was done at the behest and direction of Belgrade. As for the slaughter of hundreds of Serb civilians, most of those crimes were carried out by vengeful Croats after Croatian forces left the recovered areas and entered into Bosnia. Zagreb has successfully prosecuted numerous cases against guilty Croatians.
Gen. Gotovina’s acquittal is ultimately a political watershed in the Balkans. For more than 10 years, I have argued that he is an innocent man who was a victim of a judicial witch hunt. I have been vindicated. More important, he has been vindicated. The trumped-up charges against him were laughable. Yet he was betrayed by the politicians in Zagreb — on the left and the right — in a craven attempt to appease Brussels and Washington, and sold down the river to languish for years in a Dutch prison. He is a martyr for the Croatian cause.
His victory also vindicates the country’s war for independence, which achieved Croatia’s historic quest to escape subjugation. Hungarians, Venetians, Austrians, Ottoman Turks and the Serbs all have ruled Croatia as imperial masters. No longer. From the rubble of the Balkan wars, a Croatian nation was born. Its territory is now secure. Its borders cemented. Its people free to determine their own destiny. Croatia’s triumph is complete.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Times. He also hosts “The Kuhner Report” from 6-9 a.m. and 11 a.m.-noon EST on AM-680 WRKO (www.wrko.com) in Boston.