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His career spanned more than 5 decades of military service -- although intermittently. During WWII he was a brigade commander in Tito's partisan army and in the post-war period rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. But, in the events known as the " Croatian Spring", Bobetko, who sided with the reformist Croatian Communist leaders, was demoted and expelled from Yugoslav People's Army after Tito's crackdown on Croatian leadership.
In 1993, during the Medak pocket military operation against the Krajina SerbsSerbs Total population: 11 million (est. Population: ; Serbia and Montenegro: 6,674,470 ; Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1,479,930 ; Croatia: 201,631 (2001) (580,000 in 1991) ; Slovenia: 38,964 (2002) ; FYROM: 35,939 (2002) ; Albania: 10,000 ; Romania: 22,725 (2, the Croatian soldiers reportedly committed crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and the ICTY subsequently indicted Bobetko as the supreme commanding officer.
Bobetko refused to accept the indictment and refused to surrender to the court, indignantly claiming that such an indictment questions the legitimacy of the whole military operation. The crisis stretched out as popular opinion agreed with Bobetko, and the Croatian GovernmentThe Government of the Republic of Croatia Vlada Republike Hrvatske , commonly abbreviated to Croatian Government hrvatska Vlada , is the main element of the executive branch of government in Croatia. It is led by the President of the Government Predsjedni wouldn't assert an unambiguous position over his extradition. This contributed to the rapid physical deterioration of the already gravely ill Bobetko, and he died in 2003 before being extradited.
In 2002, the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly had halted its ratification process for the Treaty of Stabilization and Accession of Croatia to the European UnionFor other uses, see EU (disambiguation). The European Union or EU is a supranational organisation of 25 European states. It was established with that name by the Treaty on European Union (commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty) in 1992 but many aspects o because of the Croatian government's handling of the Bobetko case. This problem was later rectified, in 2004.