In their complaint, Luka Misetic and Gregory Kehoe said that Gotovina was requesting the Trial Chamber to reject the draft indictment in accordance with the tribunal's Rule 72 because it was intolerably unclear and did not appropriately inform him of the charges against him.
The two lawyers said the draft indictment did not establish the subject-matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia over Operation Storm because it stated facts which showed that the 1995 operation was not of sufficient intensity to be qualified as an armed conflict under international law, which is the condition for that jurisdiction.
The lawyers said the draft indictment did not comply with prescribed legal standards because it did not indicate the relationship between a count of the indictment and the form of responsibility, did not contain concise allegations of facts and accusations, and did not identify individual acts and the conduct of the accused which are the basis of the accusations.
The defence team said that in terms of a joint criminal enterprise, the draft indictment was not specific as to the nature of the enterprise, its goal, duration, participants and forms of participation.
The lawyers maintained that the draft indictment did not prove that Gotovina had the authority to punish, did not determine the nature of his relationship with Cermak, and did not clarify if Gotovina was charged on command responsibility for crimes allegedly committed by Cermak.
Misetic and Kehoe underlined that it was entirely unclear if Gotovina was accused as Cermak's superior, Cermak as Gotovina's superior or if neither was accused of command responsibility over the other.
According to the lawyers, the draft indictment does not explain Gotovina's alleged involvement in crime cover-ups through false information, does not locate mass graves or state who was killed by Croatian troops.
The defence also cited the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, which said the armed conflict on Croatian territory lasted from at least 1 August 1991 to at least 1 June 1992, that it was an internal conflict until October 7 and international and a partial occupation after October 8.