The defence teams representing the accused Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague are required to formally announce their appeals to the trial chamber's verdict of April 15 by midnight on Monday, Markac's lawyer Goran Mikulicic told press on Monday afternoon.
The prosecution would not reveal whether it would appeal against the judgement.
Mikulicic said that in its 20-page motion to appeal the defence defined a framework that would later be incorporated into a more detailed appeal document.
The motion brings attention to the miscarriage of justice and challenges the allegations of a joint criminal enterprise and the trial chamber's conclusions about the armed conflict, the crime committed in Grubori and the burning of Donji Lapac, the lawyer said.
On April 15, the trial chamber sentenced Gotovina and Markac to 24 and 18 years in prison respectively for their roles in a joint criminal enterprise the aim of which was to forcibly and permanently remove the Serb population from the occupied areas of Croatia. A third general, Ivan Cermak, was acquitted.
Under the ICTY rules, an appeal to a trial chamber's ruling may be filed within 75 days of filing a motion announcing an appeal. The prosecution has 40 days to respond to the announcement, after which both parties have a further 15 days to respond to the respondent's brief. An appeal chamber is then set up and it sets a date for a hearing.
