Janko Bobetko
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Janko Bobetko (1919 - 2003) was a Croat army general and the chief of the General Staff of the Croatian army between 1992 and 1995.
His career spanned more than 5 decades of military service -- although intermittently. During WWII he was a brigade commander in Tito's partisan army and in the post-war period rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. But, in the events known as the "Croatian Spring", Bobetko, who sided with the reformist Croatian Communist leaders, was demoted and expelled from Yugoslav People's Army after Tito's crackdown on Croatian leadership.
In 1993, during the Medak pocket military operation against the Krajina Serbs, the Croatian soldiers reportedly committed crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia subsequently indicted Bobetko as the supreme commanding officer.
Bobetko refused to accept the indictment and refused to surrender to the court, indignantly claiming that such an indictment questions the legitimacy of the whole military operation. The crisis stretched out as popular opinion agreed with Bobetko, and the Croatian Government wouldn't assert an unambiguous position over his extradition. This contributed to the rapid physical deterioration of the already gravely ill Bobetko, and he died in 2003 before being extradited.
In 2002, the United Kingdom had halted its ratification process for the Treaty of Stabilization and Accession of Croatia to the European Union because of the Croatian government's handling of the Bobetko case. This problem was later rectified, in 2004.
See also
External link
- ICTY Indictment, case no. IT-02-62 (http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/bob-ii020826-e.htm)