Bosnian Serb sentenced to 27 years jail by UN war crimes tribunal

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has sentenced a Bosnian Serb former chief of security and intelligence to 27 years jail - which was more than even the prosecutors requested - for his role in the 1995 massacre of Muslim civilians in Srebrenica.

Momir Nikolic, 48, was sentenced after pleading guilty in May to one count of crimes against humanity (persecutions), following a plea bargaining deal struck by his lawyers and prosecutors. Under the deal, the prosecutors agreed to drop other charges and Mr. Nikolic agreed to testify in other trials conducted by the Tribunal. According to press reports, prosecutors also had recommended a prison sentence of between 15 and 20 years, while the defence lawyers had recommended 10 years.

In a summary of the judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), released today in The Hague, the judges said that neither sentence suggested by prosecutors or defence lawyers "adequately reflects the totality of the criminal conduct for which Momir Nikolic has been convicted."

The judges noted that Mr. Nikolic attended three meetings at which the fate of Muslim civilians from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica - which had been previously declared a UN safe area - was decided by Bosnian Serb military leaders.

Their plan was to deport Muslim women and children to other areas, and to separate and then kill Muslim men. It is estimated that more than 7,000 Muslim men and children were murdered following the capture of the Srebrenica enclave.

The Tribunal found Mr. Nikolic recommended possible detention and execution sites, supervised some deportations and separations, and later coordinated the exhumation and reburial of Muslim bodies, thus ensuring key evidence was destroyed and many families still do not know the whereabouts of their murdered relatives.

The judges said that in reaching their decision on an appropriate sentence, they considered several mitigating factors, including his expressions of remorse and his willingness to cooperate with prosecutors in other trials. But they noted that his testimony in other trials was often evasive.