"People in Bosnia-Herzegovina know that after Operation Storm (the Croatian Army) continued operations aimed at defeating (Radovan) Karadzic and (Ratko) Mladic, and that Croatian forces and the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina were pushing towards Banja Luka," lawyer Marin Ivanovic said in an interview with the Mostar-based Dnevni List daily.
In this context, Ivanovic also spoke about the cooperation between Gotovina and Bosnian Army General Karavelic, who was based in Travnik.
According to the lawyer, after the completion of Operation Storm on 5 August 1995, Gotovina went on a honeymoon trip. Upon returning, he became the officer in chief for operations aimed at preventing a counterattack which Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic launched in the area of Derala in western Bosnia, near the border with Croatia, around 15 August 1995.
"After the honeymoon trip, Gotovina was summoned to return when Serbs had launched the counter-attack at the Derala Pass. All this happened in the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina and we are expecting full and mutual cooperation," the lawyer said in his interview for Thursday's issue of the daily.
Ivanovic said this could be a crucial piece of evidence proving that Gotovina was not in Knin at the time when crimes were perpetrated for which he is held responsible by prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
The lawyer added that as soon as procedural conditions were met, the defence team would ask for the temporary release of Gotovina from the Scheveningen detention unit.
Gotovina was arrested in Tenerife in early December after he had been on the run for four and a half years.