Ante
Gotovina (born 12 October 1955) is a Croatian retired lieutenant general and
former French senior corporal who served in the Croatian War for Independence.
In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted
him on a number of war crimes and crimes against humanity charges for crimes
committed in 1995 during and in the aftermath of Operation Storm. After
spending four years in hiding, he was captured in the Canary Islands in
December 2005. In April 2011, Gotovina was found guilty on eight of the nine
counts of the indictment and sentenced to 24 years of imprisonment. On 16
November 2012, he was found not guilty on all charges by the appeals panel at
the ICTY, and immediately set free. A Croatian government plane flew the
general home, where he received a hero's welcome across all of Croatia.
Early Life
Ante
Gotovina was born in Tkon on the island of Pašman. His father Milan tried to
move with his mother to Italy, but was caught by the Yugoslav border police.
His mother was released while his father spent time in prison. When Gotovina
was nearly four his mother was killed saving him from an explosion from a
construction site. After that his father went to work in Zagreb, while Gotovina
and his siblings went to his maternal grandfather Šime in Pakoštane. Around
Easter of 1971, Gotovina and his friend Srećko tried to escape by sailing away.
Soon they returned to Pakoštane after a storm caused troubles at sea. Gotovina
hid his attempt to escape from his family and continued to attend school for
electrical engineering in Zadar.
From: www.wikipedia.org
