Goran Mikulicic, an attorney for Croatian general Mladen Markac, said on Tuesday that the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia could announce its verdict in the case against three Croatian generals charged with war crimes in the 1995 Operation Storm in April 2011, and that he expected such a decision would be confirmed at a meeting to be held today between the defence counsel for the accused and representatives of the trial chamber in charge of the case.
It will be an informal meeting at which we expect to get confirmation for what we have been told, namely that the verdict will be announced in April, Mikulicic said.
The attorney added that the expected confirmation of the announcement of the verdict in April could not be considered official and that setting a date for the announcement of the verdict was exclusively within the authority of the trial chamber.
The meeting to be held today is part of informal consultations held between representatives of the trial chamber in the case "Gotovina, Cermak and Markac" and defence attorneys for the three Croatian generals, charged with war crimes against Croatian Serb civilians during and after Operation Storm in the summer of 1995.
The trial of Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac ended in September, after which the president of the Hague tribunal, Patrick Lipton Robinson, said the verdict would be announced in December this year.
The media have reported that the reason for the delay in handing down the verdict is the fact that the presiding judge in the case, Alphons Orie, and another member of the trial chamber, Judge Elisabeth Gwaunza, have been busy working on other cases at the Hague tribunal.
