Serbs' disappearance from Krajina - goal of Operation Storm

THE HAGUE - Serbia's legal team underlined before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday that Operation Storm was the largest, single, ethnic cleansing campaign in living memory, which the Croatian authorities conducted with the genocidal intent to destroy the Krajina Serbs.

Counsel for Serbia Wayne Jordash noted that the genocide was planned in the Brioni meeting between the then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and military commanders on July 31, 1995.
During the meeting, Tudjman set as the objective of Operation Storm, which followed on August 4-5, 1995, that the Serbs disappear from the Krajina region.
"As the evidence shows, President Tudjman, the leader of Croatia and its ruling party, the HDZ, as well as the Supreme Commander of the Croatian forces at the time, saw genocide as a solution to the problem presented by the Krajina Serbs," Jordash said.

Serbia provided the Brioni meeting transcript, which Tudjman himself recorded, as the key evidence of the Croatian authorities' genocidal intent.

Quoting a paragraph from Tudjman's book "Wastelands of Historical Reality", Jordash noted that Tudjman regarded genocide "as a pragmatic solution to inter-ethnic conflict or political disputes".

He noted that the Brioni leaders targeted the Krajina Serbs for extinction, adding that this was the plan that- if successful- would destroy the group or a substantial part of it.

During the operation, the widespread and systematic killing, physical and mental harm and the deliberate infliction on the Krajina Serbs of conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction on its own give rise to such an inference, he said.

After 200, 000 Serbs were forced to flee due to...