War Crimes Trial of Croat General Gotovina Begins

Prosecutors say that Gotovina`s troops murdered at least 37 ethnic Serbs, torched villages and stabbed and burned civilians in 1995.

Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina goes on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday charged with responsibility for the murder and mistreatment of Serbs in Croatia's Krajina region in 1995.

Gotovina, who is accused with two other former generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac and was indicted in 2001, travelled extensively using false identities before his dramatic capture in Spain's Canary Islands in December 2005.

Prosecutors say that during the 1995 "Operation Storm" to retake Krajina from Serb rebels in the last months of fighting, Gotovina's troops murdered at least 37 ethnic Serbs, torched villages and stabbed and burned civilians.

Gotovina, the overall commander of the offensive, knew of the mistreatment but failed to prevent the crimes or punish the perpetrators, according to the indictment.

All three, who have pleaded not guilty, are charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to permanently remove the Serb population from the Krajina region by force, persecution, and destruction of property. Gotovina, a 52-year-old former French Foreign Legionnaire, was the last wanted war crimes suspect from Croatia.

His arrest has helped ease Zagreb's path to joining the European Union, which was long sceptical about how hard Zagreb was trying to hunt a man many Croats consider a national hero.

Last week, the United Nation's new war crimes prosecutor called for the arrest of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two top war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Serge Brammertz, who took over in January from Carla del Ponte, said during his first visit to Bosnia on Friday that the U.N. war crimes tribunal should not close down until all remaining fugitives were brought to justice.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic and his military commander Mladic are indicted for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, in which some 11,000 people were killed.

Dozens of people have been convicted by the tribunal, which has focused on trying those responsible for the most serious abuses of the conflict which killed around 100,000 people.

Dozens more are on trial. Most of the defendants are Bosnian Serbs but they also include Muslims and Croats.