Fugitive Croatian General Ante Gotovina was captured in Spain on Thursday. It is a dark day for the general and for all those who fought and died for Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia. In fact, his arrest and extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is the most calamitous event in the region since the end of the Balkan wars.

Gen. Gotovina was indicted by the ICTY in 2001 for alleged atrocities when Croatian forces retook parts of the country from Serb rebels in 1995. In particular, he is charged with having “command responsibility” over a “joint criminal enterprise” directed by the Croatian state to expel 150,000 ethnic Serbs.

The ICTY’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, along with the European Union, the State Department and the Croatian government are all claiming that Gen. Gotovina’s capture is a victory for the rule of law. Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader even insisted that the general’s arrest and extradition to the U.N. tribunal is “the final confirmation of Croatia's credibility.” They are wrong.

Numerous international law experts have shown that the indictments against Gen. Gotovina are flimsy, unethical and bogus. The historical record clearly demonstrates that the 1995 Croatian operation was carried out according to the highest standards of Western military practice—with the specific aim of minimizing civilian casualties. Public documents have also revealed that the removal of Croatia’s rebel Serb population came at the direction of the leadership in Belgrade several days before the operation began. Hence, it was not—nor could it have been—a premeditated campaign by incoming Croatian forces.

Gen. Gotovina’s army not only restored Croatia’s territorial integrity, but it also smashed Serbian forces in neighboring Bosnia. His actions tilted the strategic balance of power against Serbia’s dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. This forced the Butcher of the Balkans and his proxies in Bosnia and Croatia to the diplomatic peace table. In short, Gen. Gotovina is a hero, who did more than anyone else—including the hand-wringing bureaucrats at the United Nations—to stop the genocidal campaign for a Greater Serbia.

That he should now go to the dock in The Hague is a gross travesty of justice. Under Mrs. Del Ponte’s leadership, the ICTY has become a politicized court. Like the mock trials under communist Yugoslavia, Gen. Gotovina has already been found guilty.

Under the specious theory of “command responsibility,” every military leader in history (including an American general) can be branded a “war criminal” for having failed to prevent isolated atrocities by his troops. Hence, due to the nature of the charges against him, Gen. Gotovina will be convicted and sentenced to years in prison.

The fact that he is innocent is irrelevant to Mrs. Del Ponte and her fellow ICTY globalists. Mrs. Del Ponte is not interested in real justice. Rather, she believes her mandate is to pass the final “judgment of history” on the disintegration of Yugoslavia. She is determined to destroy Gen. Gotovina in order to criminalize Croatia’s 1991 war for independence.

The conviction of Gen. Gotovina will establish in international law that the Croatian state is founded upon mass ethnic cleansing. This verdict will result in distributing the burden of guilt for the bloodletting of the 1990s equally among the Serbs and Croats. More importantly, it will undercut the legitimacy of Croatia’s territorial sovereignty. This lays the groundwork for revanchist Serbs to claim large swaths of Croatian territory by appealing to international courts. Rather than strengthening the rule of law, the general’s arrest is a severe blow to Croatia’s constitutional democracy. Serbia’s largest political party, the ultra-nationalist Radicals, is already insisting that the Gotovina case establishes the moral and legal basis for a Greater Serbia.

Gen. Gotovina’s capture represents a diplomatic triumph for Belgrade. Since the beginning of the Yugoslav wars of succession, Belgrade’s strategy has been to evade its responsibility for being the primary source of aggression. This is why the Serbs have been relentlessly advocating the arrest of Gen. Gotovina. They have now accomplished their goal.

The biggest culprit in this fiasco, however, has been the Croatian government. Zagreb could have used its diplomacy to lobby Western capitals to free the general. Mr. Sanader publicly vowed to do this during the last election campaign.

Instead, the current Croatian leader betrayed the electorate. He played a pivotal role in the general’s arrest; Mr. Sanader cynically used the general's cause as a bargaining chip to ingratiate Zagreb with Britain, Austria and Brussels. Mr. Sanader has demonstrated that he is a shallow opportunist, who will do and say anything in the hopes of getting Croatia into the European Union—even at the cost of betraying his country’s vital national interests.

And this pattern of conduct is not just evident on the Gotovina issue. Since entering office in 2003, Mr. Sanader has shown he is unfit to govern: his government has actively encouraged British agents to spy on Croatian citizens; much of Croatia’s pristine coastline has been sold to foreign investors; Croatian fishing rights have been betrayed in order to curry favor with the Italians; there have been numerous corruption scandals; and press freedoms have been curtailed as newspaper editors are pressured not to run pro-Gotovina stories. In short, the current government is selling out the vital interests of the Croatian state in its blind rush to join the EU. Mr. Sanader has forfeited his mandate to govern. The voters need to implement regime change at the next elections.

Croatia has been transformed into a political and economic vassal of Brussels.Croatians are now finding out that, after breaking away from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, they have only exchanged one master for another. And, in the final analysis, they have no one to blame but themselves.

- Jeffrey T. Kuhner is editor of Insight on the News.