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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 8:18 PM
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/message/22758
From: "Slobodan Petrovic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Mon Jan 21, 2002 12:37 am
Subject: Fw: USTASHE ARE
HERE!
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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday,
January 20, 2002 1:47 AM
Subject: Fw: USTASHE ARE HERE!
Rumours of Croatian war criminal in
Canadian town
By Gordana Knezevic
NORVAL,
Ontario (Reuters) - A thin dusting of snow covers the gate that bears the
Croatian national insignia at the entrance of the Croatian Cultural Center
and Franciscan Sanctuary in this sleepy village on the outskirts of
Toronto.
This idyllic farming community -- known to Canadians
mainly as the hometown of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the novel "Anne
of Green Gables," has recently assumed a less savory claim to fame: A
Croatian war crimes suspect is said to be hiding there.
A
mid-December article in the Croatian daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija
said retired Gen. Ante Gotovina was being sheltered by the Franciscan
priests at Norval's Croatian center.
Gotovina, 46, was indicted by
the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, last summer on
charges of committing crimes against humanity involving a 1995 military
offensive to retake an ethnic Serb stronghold in southern
Croatia.
Norval has an established Croatian community that played
host to late nationalistic leader Franjo Tudjman, who became the first
president of the newly independent Croatia. The town is believed to have
given substantial financial support to Croatia's struggle against Serb-run
Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Since the report was published in
Croatia, the Croatian Cultural Center and Franciscan Sanctuary, a large
compound containing a convent, a church, a recreation center and several
other buildings, has lost some of its calm.
Journalists,
investigators and human rights activists have swarmed the center to find
out whether the war crimes suspect, whose photo is posted on the Interpol
Web site, really is enjoying the hospitality of Norval's
priests.
Under the first snow of a very late Canadian winter, the
fields, barns and the playgrounds belie any controversy. And the parson of
the Croatian Franciscan Center, Father Stipe Pandzic, has grown visibly
tired of telling visitors that Gotovina is not there.
"I consider
it to be an invention, the story that we are sheltering Gotovina. It's
just a deception!" Pandzic told Reuters.
CONSPIRACY THEORY
Other members of Norval's Croatian
community, which extends well beyond the compound, offer more detailed
theories.
One of them, who preferred to remain anonymous out of
fear of offending Pandzic, pointed out that Slobodna Dalmacija is the most
nationalistic newspaper in Croatia. He conjectured the newspaper named
Norval as Gotovina's hideout to divert attention from his actual
whereabouts.
For some Norval residents, Ante Gotovina is a hero of
"the homeland war." They consider the U.N. indictment of "a patriot" a
great affront to Croatia, where two towns recently declared Gotovina a
honorary citizen.
Blake Leminski, of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police war crimes unit, would neither confirm nor deny that the Mounties
are investigating Gotovina's whereabouts.
Although the Hague
tribunal did not specifically ask Canada to investigate after the report
in Slobodna Dalmacija, they are taking all rumors seriously.
"There
is an outstanding Interpol arrest warrant for Ante Gotovina and he can be
arrested in any country, including Canada," said Florance Hartman,
spokesman for the tribunal. "If Canada would need any specific document we
would certainly provide that."
Hartman said there have been other
reports that Gotovina celebrated Christmas and New Years somewhere in
Croatia.
Ante Gotovina joined the French Foreign Legion at the age
of 17. He came back to Croatia in 1991 to become a member of a special
unit of the Croatian Army. In 1995, President Franjo Tudjman appointed him
chief inspector for the Croatian Defense Ministry.
In October 2000,
he was stripped of his duties and sent into retirement by the current
president, Stipe Mesic. The following June, the International War Crimes
Tribunal issued an indictment against Gotovina for war crimes committed in
the Krajina region.
PLACE TO HIDE?
That
Norval, with a population of slightly more than 5,000, has been cited an
ideal place for Gotovina to hide is not surprising. Croatians first
settled in the area after World War Two, when they fled a newly communist
Yugoslavia to avoid being prosecuted as Nazi
collaborators.
Tudjman, the late Croatian president, traveled to
Norval three times before coming to power in 1991. The financial resources
of Croatians abroad played a crucial role in the struggle for independence
and in bringing Tudjman to power.
It's a common belief among
Croatian-Canadians, which number 40,000 in the Toronto region, that the
idea of making Croatia an independent state was born in Norval and that
the decisions hammered out here were decisive in the formation of
contemporary Croatia. Tudjman's biographer, Darko Hudelist, supports this
view in a recent article in the Croatian magazine "Globus."
Tudjman
died in 1999, but judging by the books, pictures and general mood in the
Norval community center, Tudjman could well be alive and
well.
There are no references to the new, non-nationalist
president, Stipe Mesic, on
display.
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