Franjo Tuđman

Who was Franjo Tuđman?

Franjo Tuđman was a Croatian politician. Following the country's independence from Yugoslavia he became the first President of Croatia.

In his youth he fought during World War II as a member of the Yugoslav partisans, becoming later the youngest general in the Yugoslav army. After his military career, he worked as a historian until coming into conflict with the regime. He lived relatively anonymously in the following years until the end of communism, whereupon he began his political career by founding the Croatian Democratic Union in 1989.

He became President in 1990, as the HDZ won the first post-communist multi-party elections, and a year later he proclaimed Croatian independence. He was re-elected twice and remained in power until his death in 1999.

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