The ruling which the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) handed down on 15 April, acquitting Croatian general Ivan Cermak of all responsibility for crimes committed during and in the wake of the 1995 Operation Storm, has become final, as the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor has not appealed, Cermak's former defence attorney Cedo Prodanovic told reporters on Tuesday.
"All of this was unnecessary because the prosecution had all the evidence about the true role of general Cermak as early as 1999," Prodanovic said..
Even then it was clear that Cermak had nothing to do with operational orders and that he did not have an operational army or any jurisdiction over the police, Prodanovic said.
The fact that Office of the Prosecutor decided not to appeal the ruling shows that the prosecution has realised what we have been claiming from the start and what has been clear from the start, Prodanovic said, recalling that Cermak presented his defence back in 1999 when an investigation into him was launched.
Cermak was not included in the initial indictment for Operation Storm issued in 2001, the indictment was expanded to include him three years later, Prodanovic said.
Cermak surrendered to the ICTY in March 2004 and was released on 15 April 2011 immediately after his acquittal. He spent seven years in the ICTY detention unit in The Hague's district of Scheveningen.
