Top Croat War Crimes Suspect Is Arrested

Croatia’s top war crimes suspect, a retired general indicted in the killings of at least 150 Serbs, has been arrested at a resort on Spain’s Canary Islands after four years on the run, officials said Thursday.

Elite Spanish police seized Ante Gotovina as he dined Wednesday at the Hotel Bitacora on the island of Tenerife, the Interior Ministry said. He had traveled to the island, off Africa’s Atlantic coast, on a fake Croatian passport, the ministry said.

Gotovina, 50, was flown to Madrid on Thursday and ordered held overnight in a high-security prison north of the capital, the Efe news agency reported. He was expected to be turned over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague today, reports said.

The retired Croatian army general, who speaks Spanish, appeared calm and unruffled as he entered the courtroom, a court official said.

Gotovina was indicted by the tribunal in the killings of at least 150 Serb rebels by troops under his command and in the expulsion of about 150,000 others during the 1991-95 war.

In Zagreb, several hundred Gotovina supporters briefly scuffled with riot police, a witness said.

They shouted abuse at the government and hurled stones and bottles at the police, who arrested several men.

Gotovina was the last fugitive war crimes suspect from Croatia, and his capture put pressure on Serbia to come up with two other top fugitives from the Balkan wars: the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic and the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

The two are believed to be hiding in Serbia or in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were charged by the tribunal with orchestrating the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men from Srebrenica.

Gotovina’s arrest should help Croatia’s bid to join the European Union, which has been skeptical about how hard Zagreb was trying to track down a man many Croats deem a hero.