Ex-Bosnian Serb Leader Jailed for War Crimes But Not Genocide

A former Bosnian Serb political leader was found guilty yesterday of the extermination, murder, and forced expulsion of Bosnian Muslims in 1992, in the most important former Yugoslavia war crimes trial to reach a conclusion at The Hague.

Momcilo Krajisnik, 61, the former head of the wartime Bosnian Serb parliament and political right-hand man of the fugitive genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic, was sentenced to 27 years in jail on five counts of crimes against humanity.

The judgment, at the UN tribunal, will have a strong impact on the cases against Mr Karadzic and his military commander, General Ratko Mladic, if they are put in the dock. The two men have been on the run for 11 years.

The judges found the crimes in which Krajisnik was involved bore "features of genocide", but he was acquitted on two counts of genocide and complicity in genocide. At his trial, starting in February 2004, he had pleaded not guilty to all counts.

The ruling suggested that a genocide verdict in a trial of Mr Karadzic and General Mladic could relate only to the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. The court has already ruled that the killing of almost 8,000 Muslim males was genocide.

Yesterday's verdict was seen as a watershed because the judges found that the systematic ethnic cleansing that killed tens of thousands and uprooted millions was political, and masterminded and implemented by the Serb leaders.

"Krajisnik wanted the Muslim and Croat populations moved out of Bosnian Serb territories in large numbers, and accepted that a heavy price of suffering, death and destruction was necessary to achieve Serb domination," said the presiding judge, Alphons Orie.