The association of war veterans of Croatian guards brigades on Wednesday asked the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate the circumstances surrounding the relocation of Serb civilians from previously occupied areas of Croatia during Operation Storm in the summer of 1995, saying that an investigation could help Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac in appellate proceedings before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague and could also help refute the allegation of a joint criminal enterprise.
On April 15, the tribunal's trial chamber found Gotovina and Markac guilty of war crimes committed against Serbs during and in the wake of a Croatian military offensive, known as Operation Storm, which was launched in August 1995, and sentenced them to 24 and 18 years in prison respectively. The three-judge panel said that the two generals were members of a joint criminal enterprise the aim of which was to drive the Serb population out of occupied areas of Croatia. A third general, Ivan Cermak, was acquitted.
"During Operation Storm, the (Croatian) military and police forces never came into physical contact with the civilians in the occupied territory, but those people had been relocated from there before the arrival of our troops," the head of the association, Ivica Tolic, said at a press conference in the southern coastal city of Split.
Tolic said there were grounds for suspicion that "terrorist leaders of so-called Serb Krajina", acting on orders, had forced Serb citizens of Croatia to leave that territory. "We are in possession of plans, video recordings and orders for the evacuation of civilians," he said.
