Spanish authorities captured Croatian Army general Ante Gotovina, who was wanted for war crimes committed during the Croatian War of Independence; he was eventually cleared of all charges.

The Croatian Army is the land force branch of the Croatian Armed Forces. It is numerically the largest of the three branches of the Croatian Armed Forces. The HKoV is the main force for the defense of the country against external threats, and in addition to the task of defending the Republic of Croatia, the HKoV also has the task of participating in peace support operations and humanitarian operations as part of international forces, as well as the task of preventing and eliminating the consequences of emergency situations in the country caused by natural and technical accidents and disasters.

Ante Gotovina is a Croatian retired lieutenant general and former French senior corporal who served in the Croatian War for Independence. He is noted for his primary role in the 1995 Operation Storm. In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges in connection with that operation and its aftermath. After spending four years in hiding, he was captured in the Canary Islands in December 2005.

A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.

The Croatian War of Independence was an armed conflict fought in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations by 1992.