A former presidential chief of staff and advisor to then Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, Skare Ozbolt, spoke before the Hague-based UN tribunal about information which the then state leadership received about plunder and arson of houses in areas Croatian forces liberated during the August 1995 Operation Storm.
"Tudjman was nervous and angry about that. On one occasion he said that those were acts of sabotage and imputations, as his efforts were aimed at seeing to it that the operation be carried out swiftly and reintegration be launched," Skare Ozbolt said during the second day of her testifying.
Senior officials were outraged, and nobody defended those who were committing arson and plunder, the witness said.
She stressed that some 2,00 people had been processed by the Croatian judiciary for those crimes.
General Gotovina and co-defendants Generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac are indicted for war crimes committed after the said operation. The ICTY prosecution charges them of having been engaged together with the then Croatian state leadership in a joint criminal enterprise set up with the aim of forcing Serbs to leave Croatia.
In response to a question asked by the defence team of General Cermak, the witness said that Tudjman appointed Cermak as the head of the Knin military district having in mind that a successful businessman could help normalise the life in that town as soon as possible.
Skare Ozbolt explained that Tudjman had preferred a successful businessman to a soldier or policeman in this post as the latter would create an impression of force.
She said that Cermak was appointed to that post thanks to his organisational skills.
Nobody expected such developments. Cermak was transferred somewhere where he did not know what he could expect, she said.
Insisting on the statement that Croatian authorities had not any plan to persecute Serbs from formerly occupied areas, Skare Ozbolt said that the law on temporary confiscation of property of local Serbs was not designed to make them leave Croatia for good but it was intended to protect their property form destruction and to offer facilities for temporary accommodation of Croatian refugees.