Alleged war criminal Gotivina's defence clashes with ICTY judges

Mar 12, 2008, 11:20 GMT

Amsterdam - The defence of former Croatian general Ante Gotovina clashed repeatedly with the judges of the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague where the former general has been standing trial since Tuesday.

Presiding judge Alphons Orie questioned the relevance of video footage shown in court by Gotovina's lawyers. The footage included images of Croatian war victims.

The judges asked Gotovina's defence team whether the court had to stand by as it 'exclusively addressed the audience.'

He was referring to the fact that the trial of the former Croatian general is broadcast life on Croatian television.

Croations consider Gotovina a hero of the Balkan war of the 1990s, in spite of the fact that he has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the UN court in The Hague.

Presiding judge Orie also accused Gotovina's lawyer Gregory Kehoe of 'transforming the court room into a theatre'.

During his argument, Kehoe repeatedly pointed at Gotovina, turning his back towards the judges.

Gotivina is accused of having committed war crimes during Operation Storm, one of the biggest ethnic cleansing operations during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. In total, some 200,000 Serbs fled Krajina or were forced out.

Many of those who remained behind, particularly the elderly, were killed by Croat troops under Gotovina's command.

But Gotivina's defence team argued on Wednesday that Operation Storm was the only way to stop the Bosnian-Serb army of general Ratko Mladic in 1995 from connecting Serbian enclaves in Bosnia with Krajina, the Serbian-controlled territories in Croatia.