'Ruthless' Bosnian Croats jailed

Mosques were deliberately targeted, the court found

The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has sentenced a former Bosnian Croat political leader and a military commander to long prison terms for atrocities committed against Muslims in the Bosnian war.

Kordic is the most senior politician yet convicted

Dario Kordic, the first senior politician to be convicted by the tribunal, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty on a dozen charges including crimes against humanity.

The court found Kordic to be "a planner and instigator" of attacks in the spring of 1993 "conceived and executed by the Bosnian Croat leadership to ethnically cleanse the [Lasva] Valley of Muslims".

Presiding judge Richard May of Britain said Kordic was involved in crimes "characterised by ruthlessness and savagery and in which no distinction was made as to the age of its victims: Young and old were either murdered or expelled".

'You played your part'

Mario Cerkez, a military commander, was found guilty of war crimes in leading the attacks and received a 15-year sentence.

While conceding that Cerkez was only a middle-ranking commander - and one with no experience of command - the court found that he led his brigade in "assaults which resulted in civilian death and destruction".

Cerkez commanded local forces

"You played your part in the campaign of persecution, aggravated by your role as commander," the court told him.

Both men had denied the charges, and remained calm as the verdicts were read out on Monday.

Kordic was vice-president of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna - the self-declared Croat state within Bosnia-Herzegovina - and joined the highest circle of the Bosnian Croat military leadership after the entity proclaimed its existence in 1991.

The two men were originally indicted with Tihomir Blaskic, the Bosnian Croat general who is appealing against a 45-year prison term, the longest sentence handed down by the tribunal.

Massacres

The verdicts come after a 20-month trial, in which more than 240 witnesses gave evidence.

More than 4,500 exhibits were produced, and the trial transcript runs to more than 28,000 pages.

The indictment listed Muslim villages that had been attacked, civilians killed or used as human shields and people forced out of their homes.

The tribunal's judgement described one attack, on the village of Ahmici, as "a massacre in which more than 100 people were murdered, including 32 women and 11 children, and the village was destroyed".

The tribunal rejected the defence claim that the acts of violence were committed during the course of a civil war.

But it also refused to assign to either man the degree of guilt the prosecution charged, specifically saying that Kordic was not "in the very highest echelons of the Bosnian Croat leadership or that he conceived the campaign of persecution".

Both men have spent three years in prison to date. That time will be deducted from their sentences.