The defence team for General Ante Gotovina on Monday accused the prosecutors of the Hague-based UN tribunal of presenting a totally new thesis before the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) during today's appeals hearing in the case of Generals Gotovina and Mladen Markac.
In his rejoinder to the prosecutor's arguments, defence lawyer Luka Misetic said that the new claim was that even legal artillery attacks could result in accomplishing the illegitimate aim of the deportation of civilians.
The lawyer told the tribunal that during the presentation of their arguments on the justification of the guilty verdict for General Gotovina, the prosecutors actually asked from the court to take into account some other evidence if they had not managed to corroborate their claims.
Misetic pointed out that according to the trial chamber's judgement the shelling was the reason for the civilian population to leave four towns, and that they had left other parts of the formerly occupied areas for other reasons.
Can it be said that during the Brijuni meeting it was decided on illegal shelling against only those four towns. Is it a logical conclusion that the joint criminal enterprise was in place in those four towns given that civilians had left other areas for other different reasons, the lawyer said.
According to the lawyer, the trial chamber established that three persons had died in Knin during Operation Storm and that forensic findings did not establish that they had been killed in shelling. In this way, he rebutted the claims of prosecutors who cited some witnesses as saying that they had seen dead and wounded people in the Knin streets.
Eighteen years have passed since Operation Storm and to date we have not had any case of anybody claiming that they lost their relatives in Knin, Misetic said.
The defence counsel for General Markac will present their arguments later in the afternoon.
