Guardian: Croatian generals jailed for war crimes against Serbs

Judges in The Hague found Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač guilty on eight of nine counts for commanding operations that included the shelling of civilians, the torching of Serbian homes in south-west Croatia, the murder of hundreds of elderly Serbs and the forced exodus of at least 20,000 from the Serbian minority rooted in the Dalmatian hinterland for centuries.

It represents the most damning verdict on Croatia's conduct of the 1991-95 war in 17 years of investigations by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Gotovina commanded the August 1995 operations that ended a four-year Serbian insurgency and partition of Croatia and effectively won the war for Zagreb. He was given a 24-year jail sentence. Markač, who commanded police paramilitaries in the same Operation Storm, was jailed for 18 years.

The result represents a disaster for Croatia and a triumphant vindication for Serbia. The Croats have been told that the decisive victory of the war, sealing their independent statehood, was a war crime.

The judges went further than finding two former generals guilty, ruling that the regime of the late President Franjo Tudjman planned a campaign of systematic violence to empty south-western Croatia of its Serbian minority in order to resettle the region with ethnic Croats.

In the most telling findings, the panel of judges found that the 1990s regime, led by the hardline Tudjman, plotted and then carried out the policy of shelling, torching and killing to force a Serbian exodus.

Almost 200,000 Serbs fled Croatia in the summer and autumn of 1995.

"Croatian forces committed acts of murder, cruel treatment, inhumane acts, destruction, plunder, persecution and deportation. There was a widespread and systematic attack directed against this Serb civilian population, [creating] an environment in which those present there had no choice but to leave," the judges found.

While focused on Gotovina and two fellow accused, the trial has been the main opportunity for probing the strategy and conduct of the wartime leadership of Croatia. The key political leaders such as Tudjman, the defence minister Gojko Šušak and the army chief Janko Bobetko all died before having to face the courts. The Gotovina case has served as a proxy trial.

Following the Croatian rout of the Serbian rebels, the war was over and Croatia's independence secured. Bosnia's fragile peace pact was struck three months later.

In the wake of the victory Croatian forces went on the rampage, torching the homes of elderly Serbs who did not flee and murdering hundreds.

Ceo tekst: Guardian