"Not guilty, your honour," Gotovina said after each of the seven counts of the indictment were read out to him by Judge Carmel Agius.
Four and a half years after the issuing of the indictment, proceedings against General Gotovina started officially before the Hague tribunal with his arraignment.
Gotovina was not represented by his attorneys Luka Misetic and Marin Ivanovic, but by court-appointed attorney Geert-Jan Alexander Knoops of the Netherlands, because his attorneys did not manage to complete the procedure of accreditation with the tribunal.
Gotovina, aged 50, had been on the run from June 2001, when the indictment against him was issued, to December 7 this year, when he was arrested in Tenerife. He was transferred to the tribunal's detention unit on December 10.
The amended indictment from February 2004 charges him on the basis of individual and command responsibility with persecution, murder, deportation, forced displacement, destruction of settlements, plunder of property and other inhumane acts committed against Serb civilians during and after Operation Storm. Gotovina, who was commander of the Split Military District and the overall operations commander of all Croatian forces in that sector.