Radislav Krstic, the Bosnian Serb general who oversaw the Srebrenica massacre, was convicted yesterday of a landmark genocide charge and sentenced to a record 46 years in prison.
Krstic (53) remained silent and motionless in the dock as Judge Almiro Rodrigues, presiding over the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, told him: "You agreed to evil."
In a ground-breaking judgment, the former chief of staff of the Bosnian Serb army's Drina Corps became the first participant in the Yugoslav wars of succession to be convicted of genocide.
His lawyers announced immediately that he would appeal against both the conviction and the sentence.
Krstic, a Yugoslav army veteran, was accused of murdering up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys after the fall of the UN-designated "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia during what the court called "10 fateful days" in July 1995.
Genocide, defined by the UN as "the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", is considered extremely difficult to prove.
Hague tribunal judges have acquitted two others accused of genocide, although eight people have been convicted of genocide at the Rwandan war crimes tribunal in Tanzania.
Little case law existed in this area, admitted Judge Rodrigues, a Portuguese. But he said bluntly: "What was ethnic cleansing became genocide."
Krstic, who lost part of a leg in a landmine explosion earlier in the conflict - and was allowed to remain seated while sentence was passed - was seized by NATO troops in December 1998.
He was also convicted of persecution, murder, cruel and inhumane treatment and violation of the laws and customs of war.
Case IT-98-33 ended with the longest sentence handed down by the tribunal since it began work in 1994. Tihomir Blaskic, a Bosnian Croat general, got 45 years for crimes against humanity.
Strikingly, however, Judge Rodrigues signalled that others bore "individual responsibility . . . much greater than your own".
The reference was to Mr Radovan Karadzic and Mr Ratko Mladic, respectively the former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, and the tribunal's most wanted suspects since Mr Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, was surrendered in June.
Both face genocide charges and the chief prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, has indicated that Mr Milosevic, indicted for crimes against humanity in Kosovo in 1999, could also face genocide charges arising from the Bosnian war.
During the 17-month trial the court heard chilling evidence of executions and torture after the town fell to the Bosnian Serbs and UN soldiers from the Netherlands stood by helplessly.
In scenes reminiscent of the second World War, men and boys aged 13 to 70 were separated from women and children, removed to other areas, and bused away to be shot. Others were decapitated on the spot.
Evidence of the killings has continued to come to light: more than 2,000 bodies have already been exhumed from mass graves and another 2,500 located.
Krstic's lawyers argued that although many killings occurred, it was impossible to speak of genocide, because thousands of women and children were spared and transported to safety.
In Sarajevo, watching events on TV, Bosnian Muslim women who lost men in the massacre wept yesterday as sentence was passed, and called it "a reward and not a punishment".
Three Muslim officers in Bosnia's wartime Muslim-led government army were arrested on war crimes charges yesterday, military officials said.
Mr Atif Dudakovic, the commander of the army of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation, told Bosnian television that Gen Mehmed Alagic and Gen Enver Hadzihasanovic were arrested for war crimes committed during the country's 1992 to 1995 war.
They would be handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, he added. A source from the federation Defence Ministry said another wartime Muslim officer, a colonel, was also arrested.