Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in jail by UN judges who found him guilty of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and of nine other war crimes charges.
Karadzic, 70, the most senior political figure to be convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, was found guilty of 10 out of 11 war charges. He was acquitted of a second count of genocide in various towns across Bosnia during the war of the 1990s.
The judges said Karadzic was criminally responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and had committed crimes against humanity in Bosnian towns. They said he had intended to eliminate the Bosnian Muslim males in the town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims died in Europe’s worst war crime since World War II.
Presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said the three-year Sarajevo siege, during which the city was shelled and sniped at by besieging Bosnian Serb forces, could not have happened without Karadzic’s support.
His sentence will be reduced by slightly more than 7 years for time already spent in detention. It will be served in an as yet undetermined state prison. He is expected to appeal, a process that could take several more years.
Karadzic was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run, following a war in which 100,000 people were killed as rival armies carved Bosnia up along ethnic lines that largely survive today.
He headed the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and was Supreme Commander of its armed forces.
The only more senior official to face justice before the Tribunal was the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody a decade ago.
Ratko Mladic, the general who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, was the last suspect to be detained over the Srebrenica slaughter and is also in a UN cell awaiting judgment.
The Srebrenica massacre and the years-long Serb siege of Sarajevo were events that turned world opinion against the Serbs and prompted Nato air strikes that helped bring the war to an end.
Opponents of the ICTY say its prosecutors have disproportionately targeted Serbs as 94 of 161 suspects charged were from the Serbian side, while 29 were Croat and nine Bosnian Muslim. Prosecutors have been criticised for not bringing charges against two other leaders of that era who have since died - Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.
Many Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia, regard the court as a pro-Western instrument, say Karadzic is innocent and believe his conviction would be an injustice for all Serbs.