The Persecution of Ante Gotovina (part 5)

So far I have examined the charges of War Crimes and tried to put into context what sort of a theoretical event would have to occur to charge an operational commander in charge of 25 brigades with a war crime. Nothing remotely approaching the order of magnitude of war crime that one would reasonably expect a man commanding 130,000 troops during the span of 84 hours is alleged to have occurred. Why on earth was Ante Gotovina stripped of his liberty being forced to stand accused of War Crimes?

The other part of the Office of The Prosecutor indictment deals with Crimes Against Humanity, specifically:

"acting individually and/or through [his] participation in the joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed, and/or aided and abetted the planning, preparation, and/or execution of"

• Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, deportation and other inhumane acts (forced displacement) - three counts of crimes against humanity
• Other inhumane acts - one count of a crime against humanity

The second charge of crimes against humanity, specifically "other inhumane acts" strikes me as odd. Does a sovereign state hand an individual over to a concept of an evolving authority? The answer should clearly be no.

So we have one charge left to see if the Office of the Prosecutor was able to cross a threshold required to issue a lawful order to the Republic of Croatia to extradite Ante Gotovina to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, specifically Forced Displacement, a Crime Against Humanity.

This is where the indictment against Ante Gotovina gets truly bizarre. The government of the Republic of Croatia ordered the Serbs who had not committed any crimes against the citizens of the Republic of Croatia to remain as citizens of the Republic of Croatia with all the attendant rights and protections afforded by citizenship. The government proclaimed that for those that did not wish to remain as citizens of the Republic of Croatia would have the right of safe passage afforded to them through designated routes where the military of the Republic of Croatia would not be taking any acts to restore its sovereignty during an operational time frame.

The Serb Authorities of the breakaway Republic of Serbska Krajina ordered the Serbian civilians to leave.


The alleged Crime Against humanity he stands accused of is forced displacement. The mechanism he is being charged under is an act of Negative Omission. By NOT allowing the entire territory that was liberated by Operation Storm to be the target of artillery bombardment, and by creating safe corriders that people who chose to evecuate could use, he stands accused of forced displacement.

What were Ante Gotovina's choices along with the consequences of each of the choices?

1> Not declare any safe corridors. Leave the entire moving front line region subject to artillery fire. Allow any civilians that choose to evacuate through the front lines the real possibility of being ground into hamburger.

2> Declare safe corridors. Leave regions safe from artillery fire and exclude them from the free fire zone. Be aware that civilians will more than likely take advantage of the designated evacuation corridors and move through them.

Had he chose scenario #1, he would in all likelihood not have been charged with anything. The Serbian leadership would have ordered another epic migration as the one depicted of their Patriarch leading their people into Slavonnia. The Croatian artillery would have ground thousands of people into hamburger. The seeds for a future Balkan conflict would have been sown.

Fortunately for the Serbian civilians, and unfortunately for himself, he chose scenario #2.

It was because of his choice to safeguard lives, and my choice to exercise my right as a citizen of the world that we both stood there on the morning of December 7, 2009 looking at each other through the glass of Courtroom #3.