On April 5, a Pre-Trial Chamber decided with a majority of votes to exclude Cedo Prodanovic and Jadranka Slokovic from Cermak's defence team, saying that if the two lawyers were to stay on the team Cermak would be denied the opportunity to build his defence on shifting the responsibility onto two of his superiors -- General Gotovina and his deputy, General Rahim Ademi, because Prodanovic and Slokovic were representing Ademi in a separate case in Croatia and had loyalty to him.
In a joint response filed on May 18, Prodanovic and Slokovic called on the Appeals Chamber to dismiss the motions filed by the prosecution and the Gotovina defence team, saying that the ICTY rules do not provide for the possibility of the Gotovina team acting on their appeal against being excluded from the case because they are not an opposite party to the appeal.
The two lawyers said that in their appeal they had proved a series of mistakes on the part of the Pre-Trial Chamber, including that the three-member Chamber misjudged the degree of the lawyers' commitment of loyalty to other or former clients and that it also misjudged the importance that should be attached to individual elements for decision on conflict of interest.
The start of the joint trial, originally set for May 7, has been postponed indefinitely. The three generals are charged with war crimes committed during a Croatian army offensive that crushed the Serb rebellion in central Croatia in the summer of 1995.