A former Bosnian Croat political leader has been sentenced to 25 years in jail for crimes against humanity, the first senior politician to be convicted by the UN war crimes court for former Yugoslavia.
Dario Kordic, once vice-president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Croat state, was yesterday found guilty in The Hague of persecuting, killing and detaining Muslims in central Bosnia from late 1991 to 1994. He is the most important Bosnian Croat yet convicted by the Hague tribunal.
"The fact that you were a politician and took no part in the actual execution of the crimes makes no difference. You played your part as surely as the men who fired the guns," Judge Richard May told Kordic.
"Indeed, the fact you were a leader aggravates the offences," he added.
Kordic (40) stood trial with the Bosnian Croat military commander, Mario Cerkez, who received a 15-year sentence. They were found guilty of involvement in a string of attacks on Bosnian Muslims as part of a sustained campaign to create an ethnically-pure territory to be joined to Croatia.
The attacks "were characterised by a ruthlessness and savagery . . . in which no distinction was made as to the age of its victims. Young and old were either murdered or expelled, and their houses were burned," the judge said.
Kordic was found guilty of ordering the notorious Ahmici village massacre in April 1993, in which Bosnian Croats murdered more than 100 people before torching their homes.
Meanwhile, a public prosecutor in Belgrade is preparing to bring charges against the former Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, over his purchase of a house in 1999, a senior source in Serbia's ruling DOS alliance said yesterday.
The prosecutor had decided Mr Milosevic should face a charge of giving false information and could also face related charges of abuse of power and illegal profit-making, the source said. If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison. The report was another sign that justice authorities are closing in on Mr Milosevic, who was forced to resign last October.
On Saturday officials said they had detained Serbia's former secret police chief on suspicion that he ordered an assassination attempt on an opponent of Mr Milosevic.
"A public prosecutor has completed the procedure on Milosevic, and so far he should be charged with giving false information," the source said. "Two other associated crimes include abuse of power and illegal profit-making."
The source said the charges related to the purchase of a house in Belgrade's exclusive Dedinje suburb. He did not say when charges would be brought. He said they had not been filed so far because the investigation had been widened to include other people and was continuing.