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A crowd in Zagreb cheers after hearing of ex-Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac acquittal/AFP

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UN war crimes court frees Croatian ‘hero’ generals

— 1995 offensive shelled four Serb towns —

Gotovina, and Markac, both 57, were convicted last year on nine counts including murder and inhumane acts committed against Serbs.

A third accused, Ivan Cermak, who was deputy Croatian defence minister at the time, was acquitted.

A former French Foreign Legionnaire, Gotovina was sentenced for war crimes that his troops committed during “Operation Storm” which he led in 1995, specifically the shelling of four towns in Croatia’s self-proclaimed Serb area of Krajina in August of that year.

The lightning offensive led to the recapture of the Krajina region, crushing one of the last pockets of Serb nationalist resistance in an area where the community had roots going back centuries.

The prosecution said 324 Serb civilians and soldiers were killed and “close to 90,000 Serbs were forcibly displaced with the clear intention that they never return.”

Serb victims’ associations put the numbers at 1,200 civilians killed and 220,000 refugees.

Asked about crimes committed by Croat troops before and after the shelling of Serb towns, mentioned by Judge Meron, lawyer Kehoe said “those crimes have to be investigated.”

Gotovina, the highest-ranking Croatian army officer tried by the court, and Markac appealed their sentences in May, with their lawyer disputing that Croatian artillery ever targeted civilians, something appeals judges agreed with.

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Prosecutors had argued that Operation Storm was a “joint criminal enterprise”, devised by the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and senior Croat military commanders to drive Serbs from the country.

Gotovina, seen by his supporters as the man who helped liberate Croatia in the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was arrested in a luxury hotel in the Spanish Canary Islands in December 2005 after almost four years on the run.

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