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THE HAGUE-Former Croatian general Ante Gotovina went on trial for war crimes on Tuesday, accused of unleashing a "nightmare" of persecution and murder on Croatian Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars."This trial arises from the forcible elimination of Krajina Serbs from Croatia and the destruction of their community in August 1995," prosecutor Alan Tieger said at the opening of the trial before the UN war crimes court.Gotovina, 52, and two other Croatian generals, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including persecution, murder and plunder during what was dubbed "Operation Storm".The lightning military operation led to the recapture of Croatia's Serb-held Krajina region in 1995, crushing one of the last pockets of Serb resistance.Between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs were forced to flee the Krajina region to Bosnia and Serbia during the offensive in which more than 150 Serb civilians died, according to the indictment.Tieger said the operation left "a scarred wasteland of destroyed homes and villages," as Croatian troops led by Gotovina and his co-defendants "shelled towns and villages" and caused the "panic-stricken flight" of Serb civilians."For those who remained, largely the elderly and the infirm, life became a nightmare. While homes and villages were plundered and destroyed on a massive scale, many were murdered," he added.Gotovina smiled broadly and waved at the public gallery before the start of the trial. He and his two co-defendants have denied all the charges.The prosecution said Tuesday that Gotovina "planned and ordered" the artillery attacks in Operation Storm intended to drive Serbs out of Croatia."His troops engaged in widespread crimes against those Serbs who remained," Tieger added.Cermak and Markac are also accused of playing key roles in Operation Storm.Prosecutors say Cermak, 58, was "effectively the military governor of the area" and he actively tried to hide what was happening from international observers.Markac, 52, was the assistant minister of the interior responsible for the police forces who took part in the operation.However, the prosecution stressed that "these three men were not alone".According to prosecutors, the generals formed a joint criminal enterprise with the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman aimed at driving Croatian Serbs out of their "ancestral homelands" in the eastern Krajina."The departure of Serbs (from Croatia) was a long held political ambition of president Tudjman," Tieger said.He quoted various speeches from the nationalist Croatian leader where he described Krajina Serbs as "a cancer on the underbelly of Croatia".According to Tieger, in a triumphant speech after the Croatian recapture of Krajina, Tudjman said: "Owing to the strength of the Croatian army and our decisions... they disappeared in two to three days."Tudjman died in 1999. After his death prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) revealed he had been under investigation and that prosecutors where ready to issue an indictment at the time of his death.Gotovina was arrested in a luxury hotel in the Spanish Canary Islands in December 2005, after almost four years on the run.Many in Croatia still see Gotovina as a hero who ended the 1991-1995 war in Croatia and his arrest sparked popular protests.In a pre-trial brief to the judges, the general's defence said that Gotovina "ended the wars in Bosnia and Croatia" and fought against then Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and therefore deserved praise, not an indictment.As in the days of Noah...
