CROATIA: Fugitive Croatian Gen Ante Gotovina, one of the three most-wanted war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia, has been arrested in Spain, UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said yesterday.
His detention is a major boost for the international war crimes tribunal and brought immediate calls for extra efforts to catch the court's top fugitives, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic. It will also ease Croatia's path to joining the EU.
Gotovina was indicted in 2001 for alleged atrocities against rebel Serbs in a government offensive in August 1995 to retake rebel areas of Croatia. He has been in hiding since.
"He was arrested this night in Spain . . . he is now in detention, finally. He will be transferred to The Hague," Ms del Ponte said during a visit to Belgrade.
A Spanish court source said Gotovina was arrested at a hotel on Tenerife. He was then flown to Madrid and taken to the High Court where a judge read the charges against him to start the process of handing him over to The Hague. He is likely to be handed over to the UN court in The Netherlands but will probably spend a few days in a Spanish jail first.
A spokesman for The Hague court, set up to try war criminals from Yugoslavia, said his transfer was being prepared.
Gotovina's arrest removes a key obstacle in Croatia's attempts to join the EU, whose leaders were sceptical over how hard the government in Zagreb was trying to track down a man many Croats see as a national hero.
"This. . . will send a good signal to the rest of the region," a spokesman for the British EU presidency said. "We look forward to seeing Karadzic and Mladic following him . . ."
Croatia long claimed Gotovina, a French Foreign Legion veteran, fled abroad before his indictment was made public. Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said yesterday the arrest abroad was "the final confirmation of Croatia's credibility".