Janko Bobetko

Janko Bobetko
Born	(1919-01-10)10 January 1919 Crnac (part of Sisak), Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Died	29 April 2003(2003-04-29) (aged 84) Zagreb, Republic of Croatia
Allegiance	Croatian Army
Rank	Lieutenant General (YPA) General of the Army (HV)
Commands held	Chief of General Staff HV Commander of Southern Front HV Chief of Staff of 5th Army District YPA Political Commissar of 32nd Division Political Commissar of Brigade
Battles/wars	World War II Croatian War of Independence Deblockade of Dubrovnik (Op. Tigar) Operation Maslenica Operation Jackal (June Dawns) Operation Medak Pocket Operation Flash

Janko Bobetko (10 January 1919 – 29 April 2003) was a Croatian Army general and Chief of the General Staff during the Croatian War of Independence from 1992 until his retirement in 1995. Bobetko had been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia but died before he could be tried. He was one of the founding members of 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment, armed anti-fascist military unit in Yugoslavia.

In May 2013, the ICTY, in a first-instance verdict against Jadranko Prlić, found that Bobetko took part in the joint criminal enterprise against the non-Croat population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bobetko was born in the village of Crnac, Sisak in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He studied at the veterinary faculty in the University of Zagreb, but Croatian pro-Nazi authorities expelled him from university at the start of World War II for his anti-fascist views.

His father and three brothers were killed by the Nazi-affiliated Ustaše, and he joined an antifascist unit, the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment in the Brezovica Forest near Sisak. Bobetko fought for the Yugoslav Partisans from 1941-45. He was heavily wounded at Dravograd in Slovenia, but survived to become a Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) officer. In the post-war period, he graduated from the Military Academy of the Yugoslav People's Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general.