The UN war crimes tribunal has convicted a former Yugoslav army officer on war crimes charges.
Mile Mrksic was sentenced to 20 years in prison over the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.
A second officer, Veselin Sljivancanin, was sentenced today to five years on torture charges but was cleared of the most serious charges against him. A third officer, Miroslav Radic, was cleared of all charges.
Prosecutors had sought to prove the three were responsible for the killing of at least 264 people who had sought shelter in Vukovar's hospital in the early period of the 1991-95 Balkan wars.
After Vukovar fell to Yugoslav forces after a siege, people fled to the hospital expecting to be evacuated by international observers.
But several hundred were taken by Serb-dominated army units and militias to a farm where they were beaten and shot dead.
Prosecutors had sought to prove that this group were largely civilians, but the court ruled they had been selected in the first place as suspected Croatian fighters, dismissing all charges of crimes against humanity against the men, including the charge of extermination.
However Mrksic was convicted for having aided and abetted the murder and torture of 194 people, and for his role in having turned them over to a group of Serb paramilitaries he knew harboured intense animosity against the group.