SERBIA:A former policeman who became the leader of the Serbian insurgency in Croatia in the 1991-95 war was sentenced to 35 years' jail yesterday for overseeing the murder of hundreds of elderly people and civilians and bombing a hospital.
Milan Martic, a Serbian rebel leader from Croatia who became "president" of the breakaway Serbian Krajina Republic, was found guilty at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague on 16 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Martic, who orchestrated two days of shelling of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, in May 1995 that left seven dead and 200 injured and then bragged that he ordered the cluster bomb attack in revenge for a Croatian assault on a rebel Serbian enclave, had pleaded not guilty.
"That order was given by me personally ..." Martic had said in a 1995 radio interview used as evidence during the trial.
Martic was cleared of the charge of extermination, as judges found it could not be proven that there had been an accumulation of separate and unrelated killings.
At the end of the 18-month trial, the three judges found that Martic had acted in concert with Belgrade, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and fugitive genocide suspects Radovan Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic in the campaign to drive non-Serbs out of mixed territories.
"The majority of crimes for which Martic has been found guilty were committed against elderly people, persons held in detention and civilians. The vulnerability of these groups of victims adds to the gravity of the crimes," said presiding judge Bakone Moloto.
While in power in the quarter of Croatia seized by his forces, Martic would refer to Milosevic, who died in custody in The Hague last year while being tried for war crimes, as the "pan-Serb leader".
In the war in Croatia, the Serbs, with the heavy support of the mainly Serbian Yugoslav army, seized a quarter of Croatia within a few months in 1991, expelling tens of thousands of non-Serbs and keeping the country partitioned for more than three years until their campaign collapsed in the summer of 1995.
Martic was indicted in 1995, two months after ordering the shelling of Zagreb and just as the Croats, with US support, ended the partition of their country by routing the Serbian rebels and driving out some 200,000 ethnic Serbs. Martic was among the first to flee when his insurgency collapsed.
During his trial, which began in December 2005 and continued until January 2007, Martic said all he did was to protect the citizens of Serb Krajina, regardless of where they were from. - (Guardian service; additional reporting Reuters)