Amsterdam - The defence of former Croatian general Ante
Gotovina clashed repeatedly with the judges of the International
Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague where the former
general has been standing trial since Tuesday.
Presiding judge Alphons Orie questioned the relevance of video
footage shown in court by Gotovina's lawyers. The footage included
images of Croatian war victims.
The judges asked Gotovina's defence team whether the court had to
stand by as it 'exclusively addressed the audience.'
He was referring to the fact that the trial of the former Croatian
general is broadcast life on Croatian television.
Croations consider Gotovina a hero of the Balkan war of the 1990s,
in spite of the fact that he has been accused of war crimes and
crimes against humanity in the UN court in The Hague.
Presiding judge Orie also accused Gotovina's lawyer Gregory Kehoe
of 'transforming the court room into a theatre'.
During his argument, Kehoe repeatedly pointed at Gotovina, turning
his back towards the judges.
Gotivina is accused of having committed war crimes during
Operation Storm, one of the biggest ethnic cleansing operations
during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. In total, some 200,000 Serbs
fled Krajina or were forced out.
Many of those who remained behind, particularly the elderly, were
killed by Croat troops under Gotovina's command.
But Gotivina's defence team argued on Wednesday that Operation
Storm was the only way to stop the Bosnian-Serb army of general Ratko
Mladic in 1995 from connecting Serbian enclaves in Bosnia with
Krajina, the Serbian-controlled territories in Croatia.
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