Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague said at an appeal hearing in the case of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac on Monday that the transcripts of a meeting held on the northern Adriatic island of Brijuni on July 31, 1995 proved the intent of the Croatian political and military leadership to drive Serb civilians out of Croatia, even if the Appeals Chamber should decide that Croatian artillery attacks during Operation Storm in the summer of 1995 were not illegal.
The prosecution said that entire towns were targets of shelling attacks ordered by General Gotovina, noting that the towns were civilian targets in themselves even though there were military targets there. They said that therefore it was not crucial what the margin of error would be in determining the legality of the artillery shelling. For them, Operation Storm was not a military offensive that brought about undesired consequences, but an attack aimed at deporting the civilian population.
When asked by Presiding Judge Theodor Meron about the defence claim that there had been no civilian casualties during the shelling, the prosecution said that there was no need to prove that there had been civilian casualties because several witnesses said during the trial that they had seen dead bodies and wounded people in the streets of Knin.
The prosecution said that the residents of Knin had left the town because of indiscriminate shelling, adding that there had been 15,000 people in the town on August 4, 1995, when Operation Storm was launched, while on August 5 only 1,000 had remained.
The prosecution also said that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, speaking after Operation Storm, had praised the efficiency in fulfilling the goal of deporting the Serb population.
