Weathering a strong rain, some 300 Homeland Defence War veterans on Friday evening gathered in the main square in the southern town of Knin to celebrate the 57th birthday of General Ante Gotovina, who is in The Hague awaiting the outcome of the appeals his team lodged after the Hague-based UN tribunal sentenced him to 24 years in prison for war crimes.
The gathered veterans held a torch-light procession to mark the birthday of the general, who has been detained in the Scheveningen detention centre of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since his extradition to the Hague court in December 2005.
The organiser of this event, the "Braniteljski Portal" web portal of war veterans in Knin, that organised the signing of a greeting card to be sent to General Gotovina, ruled out any political motives behind the event.
General Gotovina was born on 12 October 1995 on the Adriatic island of Pasman.
A similar event was also organised in Knin on the occasion of the birthday of General Mladen Markac who is awaiting, together with Gotovina, the outcome of the appeals proceedings in The Hague after he was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2011. Markac was born on 8 May 1955 in the northern town of Djurdjevac.
