The Appeals Chamber of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday dismissed an application filed by the accused Croatian general Ante Gotovina for an order directing Serbia to produce records of meetings of its Supreme Defence Council (VSO), saying that Belgrade should be allowed more time to meet Gotovina's request.
Gotovina's defence submitted requests for documents to the Serbian Embassy in The Hague on May 30 and June 16, but received no response. On June 22 it filed an application to the Appeals Chamber for an order directing Belgrade to produce the requested documents.
The defence teams representing Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac have less than two weeks, namely until August 1, to file an appeal against the Trial Chamber's verdict that sentenced Gotovina to 24 years in prison and Markac to 18 years for their roles in a Croatian military offensive, dubbed Operation Storm, that crushed a Serb insurgency in central and southern Croatia in the summer of 1995.
The Trial Chamber found that a persecution of the Serb population had been committed by indiscriminate shelling during Operation Storm.
However, VSO records show that the cause of the massive departure of Serbs from the Krajina region was not Croatian artillery attacks on civilians, as found by the Trial Chamber, but a decision by the local Serb leadership. Transcripts of VSO meetings appeared at the ICTY trial of former Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff General Momcilo Perisic, charged with war crimes in Bosnia and with the shelling of Zagreb, and were made public after the presentation of evidence in the Gotovina, Markac and Cermak case. That's why the defence could request their admission as evidence at the appellate stage of the case.
