Tribunal jails ethnic cleansers

Prosecutors wanted 25-year sentences for the three

The international war crimes tribunal has convicted three former Bosnian Serb officials of crimes against humanity.

The defendants were found to have carried out atrocities against Muslims and Croats in an area of northern Bosnia during the early 1990s.

Blagoje Simic, the 41-year-old former mayor of Bosanski Samac, was jailed for 17 years.

Miroslav Tadic, 66, and Simo Zaric, 54, received eight and six years for what came to be known as ethnic cleansing.

However, Zaric is likely to be freed after the ruling, having already spent more than four years in UN custody.

Prosecutors had asked for sentences of 25 years but judges accepted as mitigation the fact that the defendants gave themselves up, co-operated with the court and had clean prior records.

The men are the latest in a group of suspects convicted for taking part in a campaign in Bosanski Samac intended to create a Serb corridor in western Bosnia virtually free of Muslims and Croats.

Thirty-thousand non-Serbs lived in the town before the war but by 1995 less than 300 remained.