Update with a question: How long was Mr Gotovina in Spain? Here is what the news site cope.es says:
"El ex general croata se había registrado bajo la identidad falsa de Kristian Horua, pero ese nombre ya era manerado por la INTERPOL como una de las identidades susceptibles de ser utilizadas por el fugitivo. Junto a él también se registró en este hotel de cuatro estrellas un amigo suyo, cuya identidad también estaba ya en poder de la policía. Estos datos, conocidos por la COPE, llevan a los investigadores a la conclusión de que es probable de que Gotovina no haya permanecido más tiempo en las islas Canarias.So Spanish police do not think that he was in the Canary Islands for more than five days. We do not know where he was before that, but may find out (thanks, András). This news item also gives a pseudonym different from the one that is riduculed in the comments to the post, don't know whether "Horua" or "Horvat" (shouldn't that be "Horváth"?) was actually used.
11 comments:
And around Serbia people are telling: Lucky Croats
What's lucky for Croatia: it demonstrates that they were not lying when they said that he was not in Croatia, which casts into doubt the history of public statements from the ICTY prosecutors claiming to know where fugitives are. Mr Sanader has been happy to point this out already, of course.
What is unlucky for Serbia: now there is no longer a partner in the fugitive business.
What remains to be seen: either this is going to lift a large part of the EU pressure on Croatia, or else pressure will continue on some other issue.
Those are just a couple of first thoughts.
Quite true, we still do not know where he was before he got to Tenerife. Maybe this will come out fairly soon.
Ah, summer on the Dalmatian coast ...
Interesting hypothesis, another possible one might involve some information coming from another person whose beach resort vacation turned out to be shorter than planned, Hrvoje Petrac.
These guys are so damn literal... Here's bit from the London Times:
"The war crimes suspect was carrying a false Croatian passport under the name of Kristian Horvat - Christian Croat."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1916238,00.html
It's a shame that the miniker of "Croatian defender" was already taken by Branko Horvat.
Pavlakovic's paper sounds interesting - I'll keep a look out for him.
Isn't Kristijan Horvat disappointing? With a-thousand-years-of-statehood, etc etc, to choose from, surely they could have done better than that...
Filip Latinowicz?
Tito did a lot better with pseudonyms, Spridon Mekas is cool.
Elvis did better too, under such inspiring character names as Clint Reno (Love me tender), Deke Rivers (Loving you), Tulsa McLean (GI blues), Pacer Burton (Flaming star), Toby Kwimper (Follow that dream), Walter Gulick (Kid Galahad), Lucky Jackson (Viva Las Vegas), Rusty Wells (Girl happy), Johnny Tyronne (Harum scarum), Joe Lighcloud (Stay away Joe), and my favorite, Dr John Carpenter (Change of habit).
Any one of these names would have done Mr Gotovina proud.
Seems that Nacional were reporting Gotovina's 'Kristijan Horvat' identity in April this year.
After being in Spain at the start of the NATO bombing in 1999 and hearing constant references to a certain 'Milosevik', I can well believe 'Horvat' ending up garbled into 'Horua'.
Out of all the possible implications of Wednesday's events, we find ourselves discussing this one....
You're right, of course, Catherine. I've yet to see reports of domestic reaction, beyond this item on a not so large protest in Zagreb:
http://index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=295678
That and, of course, the kind of statements that might be expected from the people who might be expected to make them (i.e., Djapic). Do any of our readers have other reports? My initial guess is that if there are major protests or "incidents," they are not likely to be happening in Zagreb.
Hm, even around Zadar, the protests are completely unimpressive. Here is HINA's report:
http://www.hina.hr/nws-bin/genews.cgi?TOP=hot&NID=ehot/politika/HC091604.4yc
I found HINA's report, by the way, courtesy of the excellent new blog by Ed Alexander, (http://balkanbaby.blogspot.com).
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