U.N. tribunal convicts Croatian heroes Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac over war crimes

Two Croatian military leaders regarded as heroes by many of their compatriots have been convicted of atrocities against Serbs during a 1995 campaign of ethnic cleansing by a U.N. war crimes court.

Judges at The Hague reportedly sentenced Ante Gotovina, 55, to 24 years in prison and Mladen Markac, 55, to 18 years for the murders of several hundred Serb civilians and the persecution of 100,000 more during an operation to retake Croatia's Krajina region and force out its Serbian population.

Krajina had been under Serb control since the start of Croatia’s 1991-1995 war in which Croatia fought for independence from Yugoslavia and against a Serb insurgency.

The Krajina campaign, spearheaded by the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, included murder, persecution, plunder and destruction of property, the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found.

The war crimes tribunal cleared another defendant, Ivan Cermak, 61, of all charges, the BBC reported.

Thousands of Croatians, including uniformed war veterans, had gathered in central Zagreb on Friday to await the verdict on the three former generals, the Financial Times reported.

Crowds reportedly watched the hearing on big screens in the Croatian capital and booed and hissed when the judge announced the guilty verdicts.

Gotovina, who led Croatian forces to victory in what was called Operation Storm, was arrested in Spain’s Canary Islands in late 2005 — after Zagreb provided critical intelligence to investigators for the tribunal. The tip-off helped Croatia to start negotiations to join the European Union.

Croatia, a country of 4.5 million people, is now close to completing those talks and could become the EU’s 28th member state within two years.