Croats rally in support of war crimes suspect Gotovina

Croatia: Some 40,000 Croats rallied in the Adriatic port city of Split yesterday in support of Gen Ante Gotovina who faces war crimes charges at the UN tribunal in The Hague.

Gen Gotovina is still regarded as a national hero by many of his countrymen.

Gen Gotovina was arrested in the Canary Islands on Wednesday while dining in a luxury hotel, where he was staying under an assumed name. He had used fake passports that had helped him evade capture around the world since his UN court indictment in 2001.

He is expected to plead not guilty today to having responsibility for the murders of at least 150 Serbs by troops under his command in the aftermath of the August 1995 "Operation Storm", when the Croatian army retook parts of the country from Croatian Serb rebels.

The counter-offensive forced some 150,000 Serbs from their homes in Croatia's Krajina region, but is seen by many Croats as a campaign of self-defence that quashed Serb aggression and prompted them to sign a peace deal at Dayton in December 1995.

"For us, Ante Gotovina is more than a general.

"He is a symbol of the Croatian people and his trial is a trial of the Croatian people," Zeljko Strize, head of a local veterans' association, told a flag-waving crowd massed on the waterfront in Split.

"From this gathering I want to send him a message: Ante, we are all by your side."

Local officials were jeered when they attempted to address the crowd, many of whom carried placards and photographs of Gen Gotovina (50).

"Ante = Croatia", "General, we are with you!" and "We were defended by a hero, not a criminal!" read a few of the slogans.

Some demonstrators wore black T-shirts bearing the words: "Ante Gotovina - pride of his homeland." Mr Strize said veterans of Croatia's 1991-5 war of independence from Yugoslavia were "ashamed of the authorities and their politics of toadying to world powers," as the crowd chanted "Treason! Treason!"

"We cannot but ask what government can focus on arresting and handing over its own generals. We are ashamed of this government and parliament," Mr Strize said in his speech to the rally, whose mood was echoed in many smaller protests across Croatia.

Some people felled trees to block roads and burned tyres, most notably around the coastal town of Zadar, where Gen Gotovina was born.

In the capital, Zagreb, some 500 people gathered on the main square, while in Vienna about 300 Croatian nationalists shouted the slogans of Croatia's pro-Nazi second World War regime, and called for the murder of the country's current leaders.

They have been under huge pressure from the European Union to find or catch Gen Gotovina, and Brussels opened EU membership talks with Zagreb in October only after a seven-month delay because of its failure to co-operate fully with the UN tribunal.

A survey in yesterday's Jutarnji List newspaper suggested that 53 per cent of Croats thought Gen Gotovina's arrest was bad news for Croatia, while only 5 per cent thought he was guilty as charged.

Croatia's pro-Western Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who stepped up the hunt for Gen Gotovina this year, said on Saturday he understood the strong emotions of many Croats who see him as a war hero, but added the government would not tolerate street violence.

Gen Gotovina had travelled through Asia, south America and Europe before Spanish police tracked him down in the Playa de las Americas resort in Tenerife. He spent two nights in a Madrid jail after Spain's high court ordered his transfer to the UN court, set up to try war crimes committed as Yugoslavia disintegrated in the 1990s.